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THE 


BOY  PROBLEM 

A  Study  in  Social  Pedagogy 


BY 

WILLIAM  BYRON  FORBUSH 
With  an  Introduction  by  G.  Stanley  Hall 


Fourth  Edition 

Of- THE  ^ 

-iVERSITY  ) 


BOSTON 

Ube  pilgrim  press 

CHICAGO 


f  *    *  ' 

•••  *  «. 

»      w*    c 


GENERAL 


Copyright,  1901,  1902 
By  William  Byron  Forbush 


INTRODUCTION 


The  author,  who  is  both  a  clergyman  and  a  Doctor 
of  Philosophy,  has  been  among  boys  and  done  work 
with  them  that  I  consider  hardly  less  than  epoch-mak- 
ing in  significance.  Dr.  Forbush  understands  the 
natural  boy  and  how  to  approach  and  handle  him,  and 
has  also  put  himself  abreast  of  .the  new  psycho-ge- 
netic and  pedagogical  literature. 

The  great  fact  of  adolescence  with  all  its  multifari- 
ous phenomena  and  its  stages  of  transformation 
might  almost  be  called  nature's  regeneration.  For  a 
few  years  before  this,  boys  live  with  their  mates  and 
adjust  themselves  as  best  they  may  to  the  will  and 
way  of  the  adult  Olympians  about  them  in  the  per- 
sons of  teachers  and  parents,  whose  lives  and  ideals 
seem  strange  and  alien  to  them.  But  when  the  ephe- 
bic  reconstruction  begins,  one  of  its  most  radical 
changes  consists  in  opening  the  soul  to  influences  that 
come  to  it  from  riper  years.  Instead  of  a  horizontal 
expansion  of  interests  in  boy  life,  the  soul  now 
reaches  upward  and  is  intensely  sensitive  to  what  the 
coming  years  are  to  bring;  so  that  this  age  is  the 
golden  period  of  adult  influence,  provided  it  is  wise 
enough  not  to  offend. 

For  one,  I  am  profoundly  convinced  that  a  new 
day  is  dawning  in  the  work  of  the  Church  for  the 
young;  that  we  must  pause,  reconsider,  and  take  our 


1 15788 


4  The  Boy   Problem 

bearings  anew;  that  there  is  a  Hght  about  to  break 
forth  from  genetic  psychology  and  pedagogy  that  will 
show  things  in  new  relations  and  will  convict  some 
of  our  best  ways  and  means  in  the  past  of  error  and 
bring  a  wealth  of  new  suggestions.  The  Church, 
the  Sunday-school,  teachers,  and  those  who  labor  for 
the  neglected  classes  are  now  coming  to  see  that  they 
must  study  and  understand  better  those  for  whom 
they  work;  and  that  everything  must  be  adjusted  to 
their  nature  and  needs.  I  welcome,  therefore,  this 
little  study,  render  thanks  to  the  author  that  he  has 
presented  here  in  meaty  and  compact  form  what  many 
would  have  expanded,  and  am  glad  of  an  opportunity 
to  heartily  commend  it  to  all  lovers  of  boys. 

G.  Stanley  Hall. 
Clark  University, 
Worcester,  Mass.,  Nov.  i,  1900. 


PREFACE 

TWere  is  a  time  when  a  boy  emerges  from  the  nar- 
row bounds  of  a  dependent  self-Hfe  and  from  the 
limits  of  the  school  and  the  home,  and  seeks  the  larg- 
er social  world  of  the  street  and  the  "gang."  The 
instinct  is  legitimate  and  masterful  and  full  of  possi- 
bilities of  danger  or  help.  Its  recognition  is  recent 
and  literature  upon  it  is  slight.  It  constitutes  the' 
most  pressing  problem  of  adolescence. 

The  solution  of  the  problem  may  be  sought  from 
three  sources :  from  a  study  of  boy  life,  from  a  study 
of  the  ways  in  which  children  spontaneously  organize 
socially,  and  from  a  study  of  the  ways  adults  organize 
for  the  benefit  of  boys.  Such  studies  are  the  contents 
,of  the  first  four  chapters.  Following  these  are  some 
conclusions  and  suggestions. 

The  matter  of  the  training  of  the  individual  boy  in 
the  home  and  the  school  is  aside  from  the  purpose  of 
this  inquiry,  whose  aim  is  to  discuss  the  boy  as  dealt 
with  in  his  social  relations  in  the  institutions  of  the 
community  and  the  Church.  To  the  science  of  thi. 
sort  of  education  I  have  given  the  name  social  peda- 
SOgy. 

The  importance  of  these  modest  and  hitherto  un- 
classified instrumentalities  has  seemed  so  great  to 
those  engaged  in  this  work  that  a  general  fellowship 
of  workers  with  boys,  to  which  has  been  given  the 


6  The  Boy   Problem 

suggestive  name,  "The  Men  of  Tomorrow,"  was 
formed  in  1895  for  the  single  purpose  of  studying 
boys  and  their  needs,  and  of  bexroming  a  bureau  of 
information  upon  the  subject.  This  alliance  has, 
through  its  conferences  and  by  means  of  the  mono- 
graphs which  it  has  published,  quietly  done  much  to 
stimulate  interest  in  the  movement  for  boys.  To  the 
men  and  women  in  the  alliance,  of  which  the  author 
is  president,  acknowledgment  must  be  made  for  their 
contributions  of  information  and  help  without  which 
this  study  would  have  been  impossible,  and  to  them 
he  dedicates  the  results. 

The  author  welcomes  letters  of  inquiry  and  criti- 
cism. The  membership  and  facilities  of  "Thte  Men  of 
Tomorrow"  are  also  open  to  all  who  desire  to  insti- 
tute or  improve  instrumentalities  for  work  with  boys. 

Special  thanks  are  here  rendered  to  Drs.  G.  Stanley 
Hall  and  Graham  Taylor  for  permission  to  reprint 
portions  of  this  book  which  have  appeared  in  the  Ped- 
agogical Seminary  and  The  Commons. 

William  Byron  Forbush. 
Winthrop  Church,  Boston. 


NOTE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION 
The  author  has  taken  advantage  of  the  call  for  an- 
other edition,  to  go  over  his  material  again  carefully, 
and  has  made  about  two  hundred  changes  and  ad- 
ditions. The  sections  on  the  Sunday-school  and  De- 
cision Day,  and  the  Bibliography  have  been  entirely 
rewritten. 


CONTENTS 

X  Boy-Life  :  a  Digest  of  the  recent  scattered 
literature  of  the  Child  Study  of 
Adolescence  with  special  reference 
to  the  Social  Development  of  the 
Boy 9 

^  By-Laws  of  Boy-Life  :  some  Exceptions 
to  and  Limitations  of  Generalities 
about  Boys 29 

V  Ways  in  Which  Boys  Spontaneously  Or- 
ganize Socially  :  a  Study  of  the 
**Gang"  and  Child-Societies  ...     42 

^  Social  Organizations  Formed  for  Boys 
BY  Adults  :  a  Critique  of  Boys' 
Clubs  and  Church  Work  for  Boys    .     52 

5  Some  Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help 

Boys:     a  Constructive  Study  .    .     .123 

u  The  Boy  Problem  in  the  Church    .     .     .  158 

A    Directory  of   Social    Organizations   for 

Boys .   178 

A  List  of  Books  and  Pamphlets  about  Work 

with  Boys 188 

A  Reading  Course  on  the  Boy  Problem  .   .     .198 
Index 200 


or  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


BOY-LIFE 


The  boy  becomes  a  social  being  by  development. 
It  seems  necessary  to  gather  and  summarize  the  re- 
sults of  child-study,  now  rapidly  becoming  familiar 
yet  still  inaccessible  to  many,  which  show  how  that 
development  is  made. 

The  birth  of  a  boy  is  not  his  beginning.  The  pre- 
natal child  passes  up  through  every  grade  of  animal 
life  from  the  simplest  and  lowest  to  the  highest  and 
most  complex.  Over  one  hundred  and  forty  uselessi 
organs  appear,  grow  and  are  done  away,  like  leaves/ 
upon  this  tree  of  life,  in  this  miracle  of  child-evolution/ 
After  birth  this  ''candidate  for  humanity"  continues 
this  evolution^  this  "climbing  up  his  ancestral  tree," 
in  which  he  has  already  repeated  the  history  of  the 
animal  world,  by  repeating  the  history  of  his  own 
race-life  from  savagery  unto  civilization.  "The  child," 
says  Chamberlain,  "is-father  of  the  man,  and  brother 
of  the  race." 

The  period  of  a  boy's  life  is  rouglily  divided  as- fol- 
lows :  infancy,  from  birth  to  about  six  ;J  childhood,  from » 
six  to  twelve ;  adolescence  from  about  twelve  tO'  man- 
hood. 

It  is  not  until  about  six  that,  with  the  rise  and  sen- 
sitization of  memory,  the  continent  of  child-life  ap- 
pears above  the  sea  to  vision.  Those  years  of  moulding 


10  The  Boy,  Problem 

and  upheaval  which  we  do  not  remember  as  to  our- 
selves and  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  secure  verbal 
testimony,  though  silent,  are  not  unimportant.  Physi- 
cally, infancy  is  characterized  by  the  most  restless 
activity.  "The  period  of  greatest  physical  activity  in 
a  man's  life  ends  at  about  six."  The  infant  is  like  the 
wild  creatures  of  the  wood,  and  it  is  as  cruel  to  confine 
the  physical  activities  of  young  children  in  the  nur- 
sery, the  kindergarten  and  the  school  as  those  of 
squirrels  and  swallows.  Mentally,  the  infant  boy  ap- 
pears to  consist  mostly  of  a  bundle  of  instincjts.  Of 
these  the  simpler  ones  of  grasping,  locomotion,  curi- 
osity, etc.,  are  m^ans  of  self-education,  but  the  most 
marked  is  imitation.  ''These  instincts  are  implanted 
for  the  sake  of  giving  rise  to  habits.  This  purpose 
accomplished,  the  instincts,  as  such,  fade  away." 

Childhood  is  marked  by  less  violent  but  more  self; 
directed  physical  activity;  in  its  earlier  part  by  fre- 
quent contests  with  the  contagious  diseases,  and  a 
struggle  for  constitutional  vitality  (with  a  peculiarly 
sickly  year  at  abouf"  eight) ;  the  development  of  the 
higher  instincts  rather  than  those  of  a  merely  animal 
quality ;  and  the  emergence  of  the  memory,  the  emo- 
\    tions,  the  imagination  and  the  self-consciousness.  This 

I  period  is  a  contmuation  of  the  first  rather  than  the 
introduction  to  the  third.  These  first  two  form  that 
age  of  immaturity  and  dependence,  longer  than  that 
granted  to  any  other  of  the  animal  order,  given  to 
ichildhood  for  its  protection  and  preparation  in  the 
nome  and  the  school  for  the  larger  tasks  of  social  and 
rpdependent  manhood. 


Boy-Life  ii 

\\    The  instinct  which  is  most  prominent  in  this  period 

I*  is  the  play-instinct.    It  is  both  expression  and  means 

i  of  education.     It  expresses  the  awakening  instincts, 

//  and  so  teaches  us  what  the  child's  nature  is.    It  is  the 

/I   natural  way  by  which  the  child  finds  out  things.  The 

child's  manner  of  play  at  different  ages  is  distinctive. 

Mr.  Joseph  Lee  classifies  the  child  in  play  as  in  order, 

in  the   dramatic,   the   self-assertive   and  the   loyalty 

periods. 

The  infant  plays  alone,  by  creeping,  shaking,  fond- 
ling, etc.,  developing  the  simpler  instincts  through 
curiosity  and  experiment.  The  boy-child  begins  to 
imagine  and  to  personify  in  his  games,  and  wishes 
often  to  play  with  others.  But  that  this  social  instinct 
is  as  yet  incomplete  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  games 
it  is  each  one  for  himself ;  the  team-work  so  admirable 
among  young  men  is  entirely  lacking,  and  even  in 
playing  team-games  eadh  player  seeks  his  own  glory 
and  repeatedly  sacrifices  the  welfare  of  the  team  to 
himself.  To  take  advantage  of  this  play-instinct, 
which  enfolds  in  itself  so  many  other  instincts,  is  the 
newest  problem  in  education. 

During  these  two  periods  the  boy  has  been  chang- 
ing from  a  bundle  of  instincts  to  a  bundle  of  habits. 
The  trails  are  becoming  well  traveled  roads.  jBoyhoodj 
is  the  time  for  forming  habits,  as  adolescemce  is  tho'p  * 
time  for  shaping  ideals.  This  is  the  era  for  conscience-  ' 
building,  as  the  later  is  the)  era  for  will-training.  Po- 
liteness, moral  conduct,  and  even  religious  observance 
may  now  be  made  so  much  a  matter  of  course  that 


/ 


12  The  Boy  Problem 

they  will  never  seem  foreign.  The  possibilities  for 
wise  parenthood  to  preempt  the  young  soul  for  good- 
ness are  incalculable. 

One  reason  why  this  is  true  is  because  verbal  jnem- 
ory  is  more  acute  than  at  any  other  period.  "The 
best  period  for  learning  a  foreign  language  ends  before 
fourteen."  This  power  of  absorption  forms  the  char- 
acteristic of  this  second  period.  Our  duty  now  is  to 
feed  the  child.  The  boy  can  absorb  more  nutriment 
and  also  more  information,  more  helpful  or  hurtful 
facts,  more  proverbs  of  wisdom,  more  Scripture  and 
hymns,  for  future  use,  than  ever  again  in  his  life.  In 
this  absorptive  rather  than  originative  quality  is  the 
strong  distinction  between  this  period  and  that  which 
follows. 

The  boy  of  this  age  is  not  mere  animal.  His  emo- 
tional instincts  are  growing.  And  of  these  love  is 
one  of  the  deepest  and  one  of  the  first.  Although  it 
be  true,  as  Paolo  Lombroso  says,  that  "the  child  tends 
not  to  love,  but  to  be  loved  and  exclusively  loved," 
yet  his  loves  mark  the  brightening  dawn  of  the  social 
and  altruistic  instincts ;  and  so  love  for  mother,  for 
teacher,  for  some  older  friend  who  is  an  ideal,  love  for 
truth  which  is  so  startling  in  the  unperverted  child, 
love  for  God  and  good  things  as  He  and  they  are 
understood — these  are  all  characteristic  of  the  warm- 
hearted days  of  boyhood. 

Together  with  the  ideas  and  ideals  which  the  boy 
absorbs  by  precept  and  imitation  there  begins  to 
appear  sometime  during  this  period  the  sense  of  per- 


\ 


^Moy-Life  13 

sonal  responsibility^'    This  manifests  itself  not  in  the 
form  of  intellectual  doubt  or  deep  inquiry  but  rather . 
in  the  acknowledgment  of  being  under  law.    The  hab-  \ 
its  formed  in  this  period  are  also  strongly  determina- 
tive  of   the    future    trend   toward   righteousness   or 
wrong.    Upon  the  very  molecules  themselves  an  im-      *^ 
placable  and  unerasable  register  is  being  made. 

In  summary,  we  may  call  this  the  Old  Testament 
era  of  the  boy's  life.  The  Bible,  that  marvelous  man-^ 
ual  -of  pedagogy,  has  been  thought  to  reflect  in  either 
Testament  childhood  and  adolescence.  "The  key  of 
the  Old  Testament,"  says  Sheldon,  "is  obedienca" 
This  we  have  said  is  the  key  to  childhood.  The  law 
must  come  before  the  gospel,  the  era  of  nature  before 
the  era  of  grace.  Those  old  heroes  were  only  great 
big  boys,  and  it  is  an  underlying  sympathy  with  them 
which  explains  why  boys  of  this  age  prefer  the  Old 
Testament  to  the  New.  There  are  sound  reasons  why 
it  should  first  be  taught  them. 

Especially  in  religious  ideas  are  boys  under  twelve 
much  like  the  ancients.  Many  times  they  actually 
pass  through  the  stages  of  religion  passed  through  by/ 
primitive  peoples,  namely,  nature  worship,  mythology,! 
fetishistic  superstition*  The  contents  of  many  a  boy's 
mind  and  pocket  reveal  a  recourse  to  charms,  incanta- 
tions anci  anthropomorphisms.  At  the  best  the  God 
of  one's  childhood  is  but  a  great  man,  and  it  is  a  sol- 
emnizing fact  that  He  often  bears  the  face  and  nature 
of  the  child's  own  earthly  father.^ 

It  is  of  these  "young  Pretenders,"  as  Sully  calls 


14  The  Boy  Problem 

them,  that  some  to-me-unknown  interpreter  has  thus 
spoken  recently  in  the  Independent: 

"There  was  a  time  when  we  thought  the  grasshop- 
pers were  old,  a  time  when  all  our  days  passed  Hke 
long,  happy  years;  and  the  length  of  one  short  path 
that  crossed  a  brook  and  held  somewhere  in  its  course 
the  summit  of  a  hill,  was  a  long  journey  to  take.  We 
were  the  new  heirs  of  creation  then,  not  yet  finished, 
and  taking  kindly  to  our  original  dust.  If  our  sires 
were  already  looking  forward  to  an  inheritance  be- 
yond the  grave,  to  us  more  particularly  belonged  the 
earth  and  the  fulness  thereof.  We  possessed  the  land 
and  the  sea.  We  diffused  our  own  radiance,  and  the 
very  skies  were  blue  for  our  sake. 

''Having  no  enemies  to  forgive,  our  prayers  were 
short;  but  our  faith  was  expansive.  We  believed 
everything  and  sighed  for  more.  Somewhere  in  the 
cool  green  shadows  were  good  spirits  that  we  never 
saw,  whose  influence  our  little  pagan  souls  confessed. 
We  dealt  in  miracles  and  prophecies  as  sincerely  as 
ever  did  a  Hebrew  prophet.  A  chirruping  cricket  was 
the  harbinger  of  fortune  ;  if  the  leaves  of  a  little  whirl- 
wind passed  but  once  around  our  devoted  heads  we 
were  invincible,  and  should  a  butterfly  chance  to 
brush  our  cheek  with  its  happy  wings  that  was  a 
token  of  joys  to  come.  All  things  were  to  us  the  signs 
of  blessings. 

"Mentally  we  had  the  divine  impulse.  We  were  not 
inventive  because  we  were  creative.  We  could  have 
made  stars  had  there  been  a  convenient  heaven  to 


Boy-Life  15 

lodge  them  in.  There  was  gold  beneath  the  green- 
sward of  our  hillside;  the  bead^  around  our  necks 
were  strands  of  pearls.  And  if  we  strutted  through 
some  meadow,  changing  the  ranks  of  larkspur  to 
brave  knights  and  the  daisies  to  fair  ladies,  we  ruled 
our  realm  with  an  'even-handed  justice'  that  might 
have  caused  more  substantial  sovereigns  to  blush  for 
shame.  We  never  cried  for  other  worlds  to  conquer, 
but  climbed  the  intervening  fence  and  extended  our 
creation  over  our  neighbor's  meadow.  Politically  we 
belonged  to  every  era  of  civilization,  and  were  barba- 
rians to  boot.  We  were  cave-dwellers  who  stormed 
sixteenth  century  castles,  Roman  centurions  setting 
up  modem  republics.  We  were  Don  Quixotes  in 
valor,  martyrs  and  fanatics  in  religion.  But  at  heart 
we  were  always  communists,  who  understood  the 
common  law  of  possession  better  than  some  latter  day 
economists. 

"Learning  we  had  not,  nor  needed ;  but  we  did  have 
understanding.  We  were  earth  natives,  with  more 
than  an  inkling  of  what  transpires  in  the  mind  of  an 
ant,  being  not  far  removed  from  it  nor  from  the  stars 
above  our  heads.  Our  inspirations  gave  us  the  ad- 
vantage over  facts  and  made  us  independent  of  the 
'eternal  fitness  of  things.' 

"Morally,  we  rejoiced  in  the  sense  of  irresponsibil- 
ity as  the  angels  do  in  heaven.  We  had  not  congealed 
into  our  proportion  of  virtues  and  vices.  Those  fierce 
dragons,  Right  and  Wrong,  who  do  every  man  to 
death  soon  or  late,  had  not  then  passed  the  gates  of 


1 6  The  Boy  Problem 

our  Eden.  There  was  no  forbidden  fruit,  no  deeds 
were  evil,  and  the  innocent  lies  we  told  were  but 
flights  to  try  the  wings  of  our  fancy.  Our  conscience 
was  mere  hearsay,  an  impartation  from  our  elders. 
For,  while  we  had  in  us  dim  foreshadowings  of  im- 
mortality, we  were  innocent  Pharisees  then  in  ethical 
matters.  All  of  life  was  a  play,  an  acting  of  noble 
parts ;  and  whether  it  was  the  role  of  pagan  king  or 
pious  monk,  we  were  equally  sincere. 

"Sympathy  was  our  chief  quality.  Of  that  we  had 
more  than  of  what  Elbert  Hubbard  calls  'poise.'  A 
sparrow  lying  dead  in  our  path  with  crumpled  wings 
could  bring  a  gush  of  tears  to  eyes  that  a  few  years 
hence  were  to  be  dr>'  and  hard  upon  a  field  where  men 
lay  dying  of  gaping  wounds.  But  at  the  time  we  took 
a  solemn  satisfaction  in  the  sparrow's  funeral.  We  laid 
him  in  .state,  and  passed  before  his  bier  bowed  with 
ancient  grief.  And  we  buried  him  with  his  little  dead 
breast  turned  pathetically  up  to  the  blue  skies  that  he 
had  loved.  Afterward  we  spoke  kindly  of  hirn,  be- 
lieving that  he  would  sing  for  us  in  Paradise  'some 
day' — so  firmly  did  we  cherish  every  sweet  and  kindly 
hope.  No  one  else  believes  so  firmly  as  children  do 
in  the  resurrection,  because  to  no  one  else  does  death 
appear  so  unnatural. 

"Our  sense  of  justice  was  elemental,  and  it  was  long 
before  the  Jungle  Law  of  this  world  prevailed  with 
our  spirits — never,  in  fact,  till  we  had  left  far  behind 
the  enchanted  rainbow  of  childhood.  Yet,  even  then 
we  had  our  share  of  skepticism.     While  we  believed 


Boy-Life  17 

so  much  that  we  did  not  see  and  could  not  know,  we 
distrusted  each  other  with  primitive  candor  that  we 
were  obHged  later  on  to  put  away  with  other  childish 
things.  We  were  as  shrewd  as  men  are  in  our  com- 
mercial intc  -courses,  driving  hard  bargains  with  each 
other  in  the  matter  of  balls,  June  bugs  and  dead  but-' 
terfly  wings. 

''We  were  religious  bigots,  clinging  with  unchristian 
fervor  to  our  fathers'  creeds,  and  ready  to  die  by  these 
ancestral  ladders  to  heaven.  But  nothing  was  so  rare 
among  us  as  a  self-confessed  and  mortified  sinner ; 
for  in  those  days  our  sins  distinguished  us  more  than 
our  virtues  did  afterward.  Besides,  humility  was  an 
unknown  sentimentality  with  us.  Our  very  Pharisa- 
ism consisted  in  thanking  our  heavenly  bodies  that  we 
were  not  as  good  as  some  were — prim,  pale  little  faces 
that  stared  at  us  rnournfully  from  the  pages  of  our 
story-books.  With  what  brimming  eyes  of  compas- 
sion did>we  regard'  these  little  premature  saints,  who 
always  died  and  went  to  heaven — but  after  such  har- 
rowing sorrows  and  awful  chastenings ! 

"Finally,  we  belonged  to  the  universal  secret  order 
of  childhood,  irrespective  of  race  or  station,  an  order 
so  exclusive  that  Hans  Andersen  was  the  only  .man 
ever  initiated,  though  some  think  Homer  would  have 
been  eligible,  if  there  had  been  any  children  among 
the  gods  and  heroes  of  his  day.  Those  who  have 
watched  children,  strangers  to  each  other,  going 
through  the  signs  and  equivalents  of  becoming  ac- 
quainted, know  that  such  an  order  does  exist  in  the 


i8  The  Boy  Problem 

form  of  some  childish  telepathy.  And  though  we 
might,  as  a  matter  of  precaution,  confess  our  sins  to  a 
priest,  the  secrets  of  this  divine  order  have  never  been 
divulged.  To  our  fathers  we  may  have  confided  a  few 
worldly  maxims,  as  a  partridge  flutters  deceitfully 
before  the  hunter  to  conceal  her  brood,  but  we  had 
our  mental  reservations,  peopled  with  our  own  fairies 
and  will-o'-the-wisps,  and  ruled  over  by  our  own  gods, 
which,  were  quite  independent  of  any  other  gods  in 
heaven  or  earth.  And  written  above  the  door  of  our 
interior  was  this  solemn  injunction,  'Except  Ye  Be- 
come As  Little  Children  Ye  Cannot  Enter  Here!' 
But  can  a  camel  ,pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle  ?  or 
a  sinful  man  enter  the  gates  of  heaven?  or  a  Solomon, 
with  his  'vanity  of  vanities,'  catch  sight  of  that  'im- 
mortal sea  that  brought  us  hither?'  " 

Adolescence  is  bounded  at  the  beginning  by  ap- 
proaching puberty,  and  at  the  end  by  complete  man- 
hood. The  so-called  American  boy,  who  was  really  a 
Persian  in  his  love  of  war,  or  an  Athenian  each  day 
telling  or  hearing  some  new  thing,  or  a  Hindu  in  his 
dreams,  or  a  Hebrew  in  his  business  sense,  is  rapidly 
coming  down  through  the  millenniums,  and  has 
reached  the  days  of  Bayard  and  Siegfried  and  Launce- 
J[ot. 

It  is  the  time  of  change.  By  fifteen  the  brain  stops 
growing,  the  large  arteries  increase  one-third,  the 
temperature  rises  one  degree,  the  reproductive  organs 
have  functioned,  the  voice  deepens,  the  stature  grows 
by  bounds,  and  the  body  needs  more  sleep  and  food 


Boy-Life  19 

than  ever  before.  It  is  the  emotional  agg.  No  songs 
are  too  gay,  no  sorrow^eygT"so"fearml.  It  is' the  time 
for  slang,  because  no  words  in  any  dictionai;"y  can 
possibly  express  all  that  crowds  to  utterance.  It  is  the 
time  for  falling  in  love  most  thoughtlessly  and  most 
unselfishly.  The  child  wants  to  be  entertained  con- 
stantly. This  is  a  natural  condition.  "It  is  as  neces- 
sary to  develop  the  blood-vessels  of  a  boy  as  crying  ;\ 
is  those  of  a  baby."  It  is  the  enthusiastic  age.  The 
masklike,  impassive  face  at  this  age  is  a  sign  of  a  loss 
of  youth  or  of  purity.  "He  who  is  a  man  at  sixteen  ' 
will  be  a  child  at  sixty." 

This  emotional,  restless  disposition,  which  is  so 
closely  associated  with  rapid  and  uneven  growth,  the 
new  sense  of  power  and  of  self-life  and  dreams  of 
adventure,  is  often  manifested  in  a  craving  to  roam, 
to  run  away  from  home,  to  go  to  sea.  The  boy  is 
simply  seeking  his  place  in  the  world.  Ambitions  are 
strongly  evident  now,  though  often  irrational  and 
fantastic.  Their  nurture  is  the  determining  factor  in 
the  choice  of  the  life-work.  __ 

Physical  restlessness  is  often  associated  with  intel-  1 
lectual  restlessness  and  curiosity.  It  is  a  time  of 
stubborn  doubts,  painful  and  dangerous,  but  signs  of 
mental  and  moral  health.  Starbuck  fixes  the  acme  of 
the  doubt-period  at  eighteen.  Together  with  the 
doubts  there  is  frequently  an  obstinate  positiveness, 
so  that,  as  Gulick  says,  "the  boy  is  a  skeptic  and  a 
partisan  at  the  same  time."  For  several  years  after 
twelve  a  boy  is  apt  to  be  filled  with  the  feeling  that 


20  The  Boy  Problem 

there  is  something  about  himself  that  needs  to  be 
settled. 

This  widening  of  interests,  emotional  and  intellec- 
tual, is  accompanied  by  a  gradual  social  broadening. 
While  in  the  early  part  of  this  period  egoistic  emo- 
tions are  apt  to  be  disagreeably  expressed,  vented 
sometimes  in  bullying  and  again,  in  an  opposite  way, 
by  extreme  self-consciousness  and  bashfulness,  this 
sooner  or  later  develops  into  a  clearer  recognition  of 
one's  self  and  a  finer  recognition  of  others.  Adoles- 
cence has  been  termed  an  unselfing.  There  is  a  yearn- 
ing to  be  with  and  for  one's  kind.  This  is  seen  in  the 
growing  team-work  spirit  in  games,  in  the  various 
clubs  which  now  spring  up  almost  spontaneously,  in 
the  slowly  increasing  interest  in  social  gatherings  and 
in  the  other  sex. 

This  is  also  a  time  of  moral  activity  and  ideals.  "A 
new  dimension,  that  of  depth,  is  being  added."  Boys 
now  begin  to  day-dream  and  make  large  plans.  A 
boy  is  capitalized  hope.  He  may  become  morbidly 
conscientious  or  painfully  exercised  with  the  search 
for  absolute  truth.  Those  very  emotions  which  lead 
to  bullying  and  showing  off  are  capable  of  being  di- 
verted unto  courage  and  chivalry.  This  is  the  age  of 
hero-worship.  On  conversion  at  this  age  many  are 
eager  to  exercise  their  social  consciousness  and  emu- 
late their  heroes  by  becoming  ministers  or  mission- 
aries or  slum  workers  or  men  of  achievement.  Boy- 
ideals  are  always  immediate.  Like  a  vine  they  must 
twine  around  some  standard.     As  Professor  H.  M. 


Boy-Life  21 

Burr  says,  "If  the  boy's  ideal  of  manhood  is  Fitzsim- 
mons,  he  immediately  sets  about  punching  some  other 
boy's  head.  If  he  thinks  the  Hfe  of  an  Indian  the  ideal, 
he  straightway  takes  to  the  woods  or  whoops  it  up  in 
the  alley,  as  the  case  may  be."  For  this  reason  the 
wise  boys'  club  leader  who  proposes  an  attractive  newj, 
plan  will  take  heed  always  to  carry  it  into  effect  at' 
the  very  next  meeting,  ftlie  encouragement  and  direc- 
tion of  these  ideals  into  orderly  and  definite  channels 
is  a  matter  of  infinite  importance^ 

But  the  peculiarity  of  this  period  that  most  attracts 
attention  is  that  of  crisis.    It  seems  to  be  well  proven 
that  there  comes  a  time  in  the  adolescence  of  almost 
every  boy  and  girl  when  the  various  physical  and 
moral  influences  of  the  life  bear  down  to  a  point  of  « 
depression,  and  then  rise  suddenly  in  an  ascending/ 
curve,  carrying  with  them  a  new  life.    There  is  first  a/| 
lull,  then  a  storm,  then  peace ;  what  results  is  not  boy!  [ 
but  man.     This  crisis,  in  religious  matters,  is  called/ 
conversion,  but  is  by  no  means  confined  to  or  peculiar 
to  religious  change.    "It  is,"  says  Dr.  Hall,  "a  natural 
regeneration."     If  the  Hughlings-Jackson  three-level  / 
theory  of  the  brain  be  true,  there  is  at  this  time  a  final  ( 
and  complete  transfer  of  the  central  powers  of  the  1 
brain  from  the  lower  levels  of  instinct  and  motor  pow- 
er to  the  higher  levels.    "It  is,"  says  Lancaster,  "the 
focal  point  of  all  psychology."    Dr.  Starbuck's  careful 
though  diffusive  study  shows  that  this  change  is  apt 
to  come  in  a  great  wave  at  about  15  or  16,  preceded 
by  a  lesser  wave  at  about  12,  and  followed  by  another 


22  The  Boy  Problem 

at  about  17  or  18.  It  consists  in  a  coming  out  from 
the  little,  dependent,  irresponsible,  animal  self  into 
the  larger,  independent,  responsible,  outreaching  and 
upreaching  moral  life  of  manhood..  Professor  Coe 
shows  that  the  first  wave  is  marked  by  decided  re- 
ligious impressibility,  but  that  the  number  of  conver- 
sions  that  can  be  dated  is  greater  in  the  second  period. 

There  is  a  marked  difference  in  the  way  this  "per- 
sonalizing of  religion,"  as  Coe  calls  it,  comes  to  boys 
and  to  girls.  With  boys  it  is  a  later,  a  more  violent 
and  a  more  sudden  incident.  With  boys  it  is  more 
apt  to  be  associated  with  periods  of  doubt,  with  girls 
with  times  of  storm  and  stress.  It  seems  to  be  more 
apt  to  come  to  boys  when  alone,  to  girls  in  a  church 
service. 

Next  to  the  physical  birth-hour  this  hour  of  psychi- 
cal birth  is  most  critical.  For  "at  this  formative  stage" 
— I  quote  from  the  Committee  on  Secondary  Educa- 
tion— "an  active  fermentation  occurs  that  may  give 
'wine  or  vinegar."  "This,"  says  President  Hall,  "is  the 
day  of  grace  that  must  not  be  sinned  away." 

The  period  of  adolescence  is  by  many  divided  into  / , 
three  stages,  embracing  respectively  the  ages  from    j 
twelve  to  sixteen,  sixteen  to  eighteen  and  eighteen  to  ' 
twenty-four.     These  might  be  termed  the  stages  of 
ferment,  crisis  and  reconstruction.    Mr.  E.  P.  St.  John 
classifies  them  as  physical,  emotional  and  intellectual     » 
stages.     The  three  waves  of  religious  interest  corre-    M 
spond  with  these  stages.  I  have  not  attempted  to  clas-    J 
sify  the  phenomena  of  these   stages  here,   desiring 


Boy-Life  23 

rather  to  give  the  impression  of  the  period  as  a  whole. 
Most  of  the  phenomena  which  I  have  spoken  of  begin 
in  the  earhest  stage,  reach  their  culmination  in  the 
second  and  begin  in  the  third  to  form  the  fabric  of 
altruism  and  character.  Of  course  the  instinctive,  the 
sensuous  and  the  sentimental  are  apt  to  precede  the 
rational  and  the  deliberative. 

We  are  evidently  approaching  the  end  of  the  plastic 
period.  The  instincts  have  all  been  given.  The_habits 
are  pretty  well  tormed.  There  is  plenty  of  time  to 
grTTw7but  not  much  to  begin.  The  character  of  most 
boys  is  fairly  determined  before  they  enter  college. 
Now  the  father  looks  one  day  into  the  eyes  of  what 
he  thought  was  his  little  boy  and  sees  looking  out 
the  unaccustomed  and  free  spirit  of  a  young  and  un- 
conquerable personality.  Some  mad  parents  take  this 
time  to  begin  that  charming  task  of  "breaking  the 
child's  will,"  which  is  usually  set  about  with  the  same 
energy  and  implements  as  the  beating  of  carpets.  But 
the  boy  is  now  too  big  either  to  be  whipped  or  to  be 
mentally  or  morally  coerced. 

We  hesitate  whether  more  to  be  afraid  of  or  alarmed 
for  this  creature  who  has  become  endowed  with  the 
passions  and  independence  of  manhood  while  still  a 
child'in  foresight  and  judgment.  •  He  rushes  now  into 
so  many  crazy  plans  and  harmful  deeds.  Swift  states 
that  a  period  of  semi-criminality  is  normal  for  all  boys 
who  are  healthy.  Hall  calls  it  an  age  of  temporary 
insanity.  This  age,  particularly  that  from  twelve  to 
sixteen,  is  by  all  odds  the  most  critical  and  difficult 
to  deal  with  in  all  childhood.     It  is  particularly  so 


24  The  Boy  Problem 

because  the  boy  now  becomes  secretive,  he  neither 
can  nor  will  utter  himself,  and  the  very  sensitiveness, 
longing  and  overpowering  sense  of  the  new  life  of 
which  I  have  spoken  is  often  so  concealed  by  incon- 
sistent and  even  barbarous  behavior  that  one  quite 
loses  both  comprehension  and  patience.  These  are 
the  fellows  who,  though  absent,  sustain  the  maternal 
prayer-meetings. 

Tlie  very  apparent  self-sufficiency  of  the  boy  at  this 
period  causes  the  parent  to  discontinue  many  means 
of  amusement  and  tokens  of  affection  which  were  re- 
tained until  now.  The  twelve-month-old  infant  is  sub- 
merged in  toys,  but  the  twelve-year-old  boy  has  noth- 
ing at  home  to  play  with.  The  infant  is  caressed  till 
he  is  pulplike  and  breathless,  but  the  lad,  who  is 
hungry  for  love  and  understanding,  is  held  at  arms' 
I  length.  This  is  the  time  when  most  parents  are 
'  found  wanting.  And  in  this  broad  generalization  I 
do  not  forget  what  Madonnas  have  learned  in  the 
secret  of  their  hearts  and  from  the  worship  of  the 
Child,  nor  what  wise  Josephs  have  been  patient  to 
discover  who  have  dreamed  with  angels. 

Love  and  waiting  must  now  have  their  perfect  work. 
Cures  by  the  laying  on  of  hands  are  to  be  discouraged. 
The  father,  whose  earlier  task  was  to  be  a  perfect 
Lawgiver,  must  now  become  Hero  and  Apostle.  It 
is  a  comfort  to  know  that  this  era  will  pass  swiftly 
away  and  that  the  child  will  suddenly  awake  from 
many  of  his  vagaries  and  forget  his  dreams.  There 
is  a  certain  preservative  salt  of  humor,  common  to 


Boy-Life  25 


lifTI 
ad-    1 


boyhood   and   demanded  of  parenthood  during  this  / 
trying  era,  by  means  of  which  children  often  grow  up 
much  better  than  thein  parents  can  bring  them  uj 

Our  last  glimpse  of  this  conservatory  of  young  life 
shows  us  the  habits  full-grown  and  the  instincts  bud- 
ding successively  into  fresh  ones.    These  buddings  or  -^ 
"nascencies"  I  will  refer  to  again.    Here  is  a  heap  of    ( 
knowledge,  much  of  it  undigested  and  some  of  it  false. 
Here,  too,  if  he  has  passed  the  crisis  I  spoke  of,  is  the 
little  new  plant  oj.  faith.    There  was  a  faith  which  he 
had  before  which  he  borrowed  from  his  mother,  but  a 
man  cannot  Jiv.e_  his  whole  life  long  on  a  borrowed 
Jaith*     It  is  new,  it  is  little,  but  it  is  his  own,  and  it    ! 
is  growing.    But  here  is  something  strange.    Strong, 
vigorous,    fearful    at   first   and   afterward   dangerous 
looking,  here  is  a  plant  that  has  suddenly  taken  root 
and  grown  bigger  than  all.     It_isjh£_Willi    That  is '  j 
what  all  this  storm  and  stress  means.    This  is  what  is  • 
born  in  the  emergence  from  the  dependent  to  the 
independent  being.     Shall  we  pull  it  up  and  throw  it ' 
away?    What !  and  leave  him  a  weakling  child  through 
Hfe?    Shall  we  bind  it  down?    What!  and  maim  him 
forever  ?    Let  it  grow ;  but  let  it  grow  properly.    This 
Will  is  dangerous  but  needful.    You  can't  have  births 
without  some  risks.     If  this  boy  is  ever  to  be  a  man,  \ 
it  will  all  depend  on  what  is  done  with  his  Will.  " 

/  Social  pedagogy  in  dealing  with  a  being  who  is  now 
commg  to  have  a  social  nature  pays  its  first  and  chief 
attention  to  will-training.^  For  there  is  no  more  im- 
portant, more  neglectecTsubject.    It  is  an  art,  as  one 


26  The  Boy  Problem 

tersely  says,  "which  has  no  text-book  and  of  which  it 
is  impossible  to  write  one." 

The  public  school  fails  in  will-training  because  it 
gives  the  will  no  exercise.  "Our  schools,"  says  Wil- 
liam I^  Crane,  ^'permit  us  to  think  what  is  good  but 
not  to  do  what  is  good.'f  The  home,  especially  the 
city  home,  fails  for  the  same  reason.  The  child's  at- 
tention has  been  shared  by  a  thousand  sights,  nothing 
holds  him  long,  and  he  cannot  find  ways  to  use  his 
instincts  actively.  The  Church  fails  because  it  has 
tried  the  wrong  thing:  it  has  taught  the  children  to 
examine  their  spiritual  interiors  and  to  sing,  "Draw 
me  nearer  till  my  will  is  lost  in  thine,"  and  not  to  hal- 
low their  wills,  as  Phillips  Brooks  wisely  said,  "by 
filling  them  with  more  and  more  life,  by  making  them 
so  wise  that  they  shall  spend  their  strength  in  good- 
ness." 

General  Francis  A.  Walker  was  the  first  to  show 
just  what  the  country  did  for  the  boy.  He  used'  the 
simple  illustration  of  the  squirrel  seen  on  the  way 
from  school,  the  trap  designed  and  built  for  his  cap- 
ture and  the  successful  result.  There  was  a  single 
keen  interest,  a  natural  instinct  awakened,  that  in- 
stinct exercised  by  a  voluntary  muscular  effort  carry- 
ing an  originative  task  to  completion:  result,  not 
merely  a  captured  squirrel  but  strengthened  will  pow- 
er. Johnson,  our  authority  on  play,  says :  "There  are 
no  really  good  men  without  strong^ills,  there  are  no 
strong  wills  without  trained  muscle^s.  We  learn  to  do 
by  doing.    We  learn  to  will  by  willing." 

With  this  hint  social  pedagogy  goes  to  work.  "You 


Boy-Life  27 

can  only  get  a  purchase  on  another's  will,"  James 
says,  "by  touching  his  actual  or  potential  self."  Hall 
says,  "Will  is  only  a  form  of  interest."  We  trained 
the  boy's  conscience,  his  passive  self,  by  filling  his 
mind  with  rules,  but  we  can  train  his  will,  his'  active 
self,  onlv  by  interesting  and  making  active  his  in- 
stincts. Lancaster  says,  "The  pedagogy  of  adoles- 
cence may  be  summed  up  in  one'  sentence,  Inspire 
enthusiastic  activity."yi  spoke  of  the  "nascencies"  of 
instinct.  Every  little  while  an  instinct  pops  up  in  a 
boy's  mind  and  feebly  feels  for  utterance.  If  it  is  not 
noticed  it  sinks  back  again  to  rest,  or  it  becomes  per- 
verted. All  boys  have  the  constructing  instinct.  If 
it  is  neglected  it  either  fades  away  or  becomes  the 
destructive  instinct.  Some  wise  man  sets  the  boy  to 
•whittling  or  modeling  and  the  instinct  becomes  an 
ardent  interest.  Such  happy  alertness,  thinks  Mosso, 
was  the  encouragement  that  made  a  Raphael  and  a 
Da  Vinci.  It  will  satisfy  us  if  it  gives  our  boys  the 
good  instead  of  the  evil  will. 

It  is  also  a  curious  fact  that  a  multiplicity  of  inter- 
ests just  at  this  time  multiplies  rather  than  diminishes 
the  power  of  acquisition.  Thus  social  pedagogy  may 
use  many  instrumentalities  to  encourage  the  inter- 
ested and  self-directed  activities  of  boys  in  maturing 
their  wills  into  principle  and  character. 

The  results  of  this  chapter  suggest  that  the  last 
nascencies  of  the  instincts,  the  completion  of  the  hab 
its,  the  psychical  crisis  and  the  infancy  of  the  will,  all 
coincident  with  the  birth  of  the  social  nature,  together 
form  a  period  of  danger  and  possibility  in  boy  life. 


I-:  I 


28  The  Boy  Problem 

For  helping  this  age,  social  pedagogy,  the  combina- 
tion of  educative  forces  in  a  social  direction,  is  a  new 
and  most  important  science. 


II 

BY-LAWS  OF  BOY-LIFE 

Starbuck,  speaking  of  religious  training,  says: 
"One  can  scarcely  think  of  a  single  pedagogical 
maxim  which,  if  followed  in  all  cases,  might  not  vi- 
olate the  deepest  needs  of  the  person  whom  it  is  our 
purpose  to  help."  This  is  true  of  all  training.  The 
parent,  teacher  or  social  worker  who  should  try  to 
bring  up  a  boy  or  a  group  of  boys  by  means  of  the 
digest  of  information  in  the  last  chapter  would  find 
that  in  real  life,  as  in  .Latin  Grammar,  there  are  more 
exceptions  than  rules. 

Some  children  will  very  closely  follow  the  diagram 
of  growth  which  I  have  suggested;  most  children  will 
accommodate  themselves  to  it  in  a  general  way,  vary- 
ing dates,  order  and  distinctness  of  detail ;  while  a 
few  will  seem  to  defy  all  laws  in  their  development. 

I  feel  it  necessary  to  interrupt  the  logic  by  which 
(having  shown  the  social  nature  and  needs  of  adoles- 
cence) I  proceed  to  suggest  the  ways  by  which  those 
needs  are  being  and  should  be  supplied,  in  order  to 
relate  some  of  the  by-laws  to  the  constitution  of  boy- 
life  and  impress  the  necessity  of  knowing  the  lads 
who  are  to  be  helped,  in  their  individualities. 

In  every  group  of  boys  we  notice  instances  of  De- 
lay or  Precocity  in  development.  This  may  be  hered- 
itary, temperamental  or  accidental.    This  boy  comes 


30  The  Boy  Problem 

of  a  slow,  stolid,  substantial  stock  and  matures  slowly. 
Here  is  one  of  a  tropical  temperament  who  is  pre- 
cocious.    Sickness,  lack  of  nutrition  or  care,  an  ac- 
.     cident,  a  sorrow,  may  have  kept  that  one  back.     This 
^     shows  how  necessary  it  is  to  know  the  exact  home- 


; 


) 


conditions  and  the  life-history  in  order  to  know  the 
boy.  One  may  entirely  lose  power  with  a  boy  by  be-  ' 
ing  too  quick  or  too  slow  for  him.  There  is  a  well 
known  "clumsy  age"  between  14  and  16  when  the 
skill  of  the  hand  becomes  stationary  or  retrogrades 
while  the  power  of  appreciation  of  the  fine  and  true 
grows  on.  This  is  caused  by  the  fact  that  the  bones 
are  growing  faster  than  the  muscles  in  that  short  pe- 
riod of  stupendous  physical  increment^  A  similar 
period  of  deterioration  in  the  pleasure  in,  and  the 
quality  of,  the  drawings  of  children,  beginning  with 
the  tenth  or  twelfth  year,  is  noted  by  Chamberlain, 
wjiich  he  explains  by  the  fact  that  the  child  awakes 
to  the  true  appreciation  of  his  work  as  'nothing  more 
than  a  poor,  weak  imitation  of  nature,  and  the  charm 
of  creative  art  vanishes  with  the  disappearance  of  the 
former  naive  faith  in  it.'  This  coming  down  out  of 
.the  realm  of  childish  imagination  unto  the  level  of 
seeing  things  as  they  are,  coupled  with  new  desires 
after  the  ideal  which  are  limited  in  execution  by  man- 
ual clumsiness,  helps  to  explain  some  of  the  moodi- 
ness and  gloom  of  the  period. 

The  influence  of  Temperament  on  the  phenomena 

of  development  is  not  to  be  neglected.    Dr.  Coe  has 

i  made  a  most  suggestive  study  of  this,  but  has  applied 


By-Lazvs   of   Boy-Life  31 

it  chiefly  to  the  adult.  It  is  noticeable  in  adolescence. 
Although  Lotze  has  made  an  ingenious  and  often  ob- 
servable parallel  between  the  sanguine  temperament 
and  childhood  and  the  sentimental  and  adolescence, 
the  diversities  of  temperamental  nature  which  are  to 
be  permanent  are  already  visible.  The  readiness  but 
trivality  of  the  sanguine,  the  cheerful  conceit  of  the 
sentimental,  the  prompt,  intense  response  of  the  chol- 
eric and  the  ruminative  nature  of  the  phlegmatic  tem- 
peraments are  each  noticeable  in  individual  boys. 
The  "child-types"  which  have  been  classified  are  only 
differences  and  combinations  of  temperaments.  Less- 
haft  recognizes  six  among  children  entering  school : 
the  hypocritical,  the  ambitious,  the  quiet,  the  effemi- 
nate-stupid, the  bad-stupid,  the  depressed.  Siegert 
names  fifteen:  melancholy,  angel-or-devil,  star-gazer, 
scatterbrain,  apathetic,  misanthropic,  doubter  and 
seeker,  honourable,  critical,  eccentric,  stupid,  buf- 
ioonly-naiz-'e,  with  feeble  memory,  studious,  and  blase. 
These  characteristics,  with  their  special  relations  to 
sensibilities,  intellect  and  will,  are  to  be  noted  and 
used  as  diagnoses  for  individual  treatment. 

Racial  Differences  are  quite  marked  in  regions 
where  there  are  many  illiterate  boys  of  foreign  birth 
but  they  rapidly  disappear  from  notice  under  the 
fluence  of  the  pubHc  school.  I  am  indebted  to  Mr. 
Thomas  Chew,  who  has  nearly  two  thousand  boys 
under  continual  observation  in  the  Fall  River  Boys' 
Club,  for  his  impressions  of  two  classes  of  foreigners 
— the  French  Canadians  and  the  Hebrews.       "The 


ms    5 

th,  r 

in-     1 


52  The  Boy  Problem 

French  Canadians  are  behind  our  American-born 
boys.  I  am  pretty  sure  that  they  comprise  almost 
every  ilHterate  boy  in  Fall  River.  They  are  behind 
the  other  boys  in  playing  games.  They  need  educat- 
ing in  play  and  in  trustworthiness.  They  lack  the  hon- 
or-sense. I  do  n't  see  how  I  could  put  them  upon  their 
honor  as  we  do  other  boys — they  would  hardly  know 
w-hat  I  meant.  Th!ey  do  well  under  the  care  of  an 
Americanized  boy.  Probably  they  will  become  better 
citizens  in  another  generation  or  two.  .  .  The  older 
Jewish  boys  are  clannish.  They  like  to  meet,  exer- 
cise, bathe,  etc.,  with  their  own  race.  Their  religious 
scruples  as  to  food  should  be  respected.  The  Jews 
read  more  than  other  boys.  The  Irish  stick  together 
in  the  election  of  officers  for  the  various  societies. 
They  do  not  seem  capable  of  rising  out  of  their  in- 
born prejudice  of  the  English.  The  Jew  is  the  only 
one  of  the  lot  who  will  thank  you  for  a  good  turn." 

Mr.  George  W.  Morgan  of  the  Hebrew  Educa- 
tional Alliance  of  New  York  has  contrasted  the  Irish 
with  the  Hebrew  boy,  and  made  some  acute  observa- 
tions of  the  latter: 

"One  of  the  most  striking  traits  of  the  Jewish  char- 
acter is  its  intensity.  Look  at  the  intellectual  side, 
and  you  immediately  say  that  the  Jew  is  developed 
mentally  at  the  expense  of  the  complementary  sides  of 
his  nature.  It  is  said  of  the  Irishman  that  if  he  cannot 
easily  pick  a  quarrel,  he  begins  to  step  on  his  neigh- 
bor's toes  as  he  spits  on  his  hands  and  prepares  for  a 
clinch.    With  perh'aps  more  truth  might  it  be  said  of 


By-Laws  of  Boy-Life  33 

the  Jew  that  if  he  cannot  disagree  with  his  companion 
on  some  subject,  he  begins  a  volley  of  pointed  query- 
ing tO'  establish  by  what  chain  of  reasoning  his  com- 
panion can  possibly  agree  with  him.     He  is  a  most 
accomplished  mental  gymnast.     Fix  your  attention 
on  his  emotional  nature ;  and  if  you  know  him  you  will 
decide  that  the  strength  of  his  passions  is  his  distin- 
guishing trait.     His  nerves  are  tuned  to  a  high  pitch 
and    readily    responsive    to    the    sympathetic    touch. 
Strike  a  discordant  note,  and  his  frame  vibrates  with 
suppressed  antithetic  emotions.     The  gamut  is  run 
with  surprising  alacrity.    With  his  will  you  deal  witli, 
the  inflexible.     His  plans  once  formed,  he  will  plod 
the  years  as  days,  cope  with  difficulties  if  surmount- 
able, and  if  otherwise  bide  his  time  until  conditions 
change.     He  may  all  along  be  chafing  with  impa- 
tience; but  the  callous  comes,  and  on  he  goes.  There 
is,  however,  a  limit  to  this  intensity.       The  friction 
from  such  velocity  wears  upon  the  machine.      The 
Jew  is  physically  the  inferior  of  his  Gentile  brother. 
He  travels  faster,  but  often  falls  before  the  race  seems 
run.    We  see,  therefore,  that  the  Jew  is  an  extremist."        , 
Ethical  Dualism,  a  trait  of  semi-development!  and  S  £ 
one  with  which  we  are  familiar  among  American  ne-  ' 
groes,  is  characteristic  of  immaturity.     None  of  us. 
entirely  shake  it  oK.     Not  only  is  the  Sunday  boy  dif- 
ferent from  the  Monday  boy,  the  boy  praying  differ- 
ent from    the  boy    playing,  the    boy  alone    or   with 
his  parents  or  his  adult  friend  different  from  the  boy 
with  his  comrades,  but,  as  in  savagery,  the  ethics  of 


K  ,^n: 


34  The  Boy  Problem 

the  boy  with  his  "gang"  is  different  from  that  with 
other  boys.    It  is  the  old  clan  ethics.    This  idea  thafi 
loyalty  is  due  only  to  one's  own  tribe,  and  that  other 
people  are  enemies  and   other  people's  property   is 
legitimate  prey,  is  just  the  spirit  which  makes  the  | 
"gang"  dangerous,  and  which  suggests  the  need  of 
leaching  a  universal  sociahty,  and  of  transforming  the 
clan  allegiance  into  a  chivalry  toward  all.    The  clan  is) 
a  step  higher  than  individualism;  I  would  recognize 
it,  but  I  would  lead  its  members  to  be  knights  rather 
than  banditti.    "The  age  which  the  boy  has  reached," 
'says  Joseph  Lee,  "is  that  where  Sir  Launcelot,  the 
knight  errant,  the  hero  of  single  combat,  is  develop- 
|ing  into  Arthur,  the  loyal  king." 

Another  trait  of  adolescence  is  the  Survival  of  Im- 
maturities. These  are  not  immediately  cut  off.  Ill- 
ness, nerve  fatigue,  unknown  causes  may  bring  them 
back.  The*  emotional  era  is  often  babyish.  A  later 
survival  is  the  craze  for  the  lodge  in  early  manhood, 
which  seems  to  result  from  the  fact  that  the  adolescent 
love  of  chivalry  and  parade  has  not  previously  been 
satisfied. 

Adolescence  not  only  gives  "reverberations"  of  th^ 
past ;  it  prophesies  its  future.  This  comparatively  un- 
noticed fact  must  modify  many  of  our  conclusions  and 
much  of  our  practice.  It  is  easy  to  overemphasize 
the  fact  that  the  child  is  a  savage.  He  is  also  a  seer. 
As  in  Joel,  our  "young  men  see  visions"  and  "upon 
the  handmaidens  is  poured  out  the  Spirit."  Tennyson 
said    children   were   "prophets   of   a   mightier  race.* 


By-Laws  of  Boy-Life  35 

Chamberlain  calls  the  child  "the  general  genius/'  and 
shows  that  if  we  knew  better  the  art  of  developing  the 
individual  we  should  not  during  the  process  of  aging 
destroy  the  promise  of  youth.    This  is  to  be  done,  in 
general,  by  keeping  in  advance  of  the  child  and  giving 
him  something  to  reach  up  to  without  making  him 
unchildhke.     He  knows  by  prophetic  instinct  much 
that  he  has  not  experienced,  and  he  reads  as  well  as 
feels.    We  can  give  him  some  information  which  shall 
seem  like  empty  rooms,  but  he  will  soon  hasten  on 
and,  if  the  information  be  vital  truth,  populate  these 
v'acant  formularies,  and  make  that  which  was  first 
habit  volitional.     This  explains  why  some  religious 
instruction  which  was  not  based  on  child  study  has 
produced  pretty  good  results,  while  some  other  with 
good  enough  theories  has  failed.    The  latter  was  not 
nourishing  enough.       As   an  illustration  of  what   I 
mean,  let  me  instance  the  place  of  art  in  a  child's  life. 
The  psychologist  who  remembers  only  the  fact  that 
children  reverberate  may  say:    Give  the  child  only 
large  outlines  and  crude  colors.    But  he  who  remem- 
bers that  the  child  is  also  a  prophet  says:  Do  this  if 
you  will,  but  give  the  boy  also  the  Sistine  Madonna 
and  her  Child.     It  may  correct  the  grotesquen'ess  of 
his  imperfect  imagination  now,  and  either  a  certain 
Messianic  prophecy  in  his  soul  will  reveal  its  beauty, 
or  else,  having  been  habituated  to  it  in  childhood,  it 
will  hang  cherished  forever  on  the  walls  of  memory 
when  he  can  fully  understand.     Appeal  to  your  own 
memory  of  home  pictures  and  tell  me  if  this  is  not  wise. 


36  The  Boy  Problem 

Another  curious  fact  about  maturing  life  is  that  it 
comes  on  in  waves.  Between  these  are  Lulls.  These 
lulls  were  called  to  my  attention  by  some  heads  of  re- 
formatories before  I  read  about  them.  Those  who 
have  seen  Starbuck's  charts  of  the  period  of  conver- 
sion are  familiar  with  the  triple  rise  and  fall  of  that 
age.  It  is  not  confined  to  adolescence.  Middle-aged 
people  have  testified  to  having  regular  fluctuations  of 
religious  interest  once  in  two  years,  others  during 
successive  winters.  Some  of  these  cases  are  explain- 
able, some  are  obscure.  The  tendency  of  nervous  en- 
ergy to  expend  and  then  recuperate  itself,  the  fact  of  a 
yearly  rhythm  in  growth,  greatest  in  the  autumn  and 
least  from  April  to  July,  pointed  out  by  Malling-Han- 
sen,  the  influence  of  winter  quiet  and  leisure  upon  re- 
ligious feeling,  these  are  suggestive,  'in  boyhood 'it 
is  probable  that  the  first  lull  is  a  reaction  from  the 
shock  of  the  puberal  change,  the  second  a  reaction 
from  the  year  of  greatest  physical  growth,  and  the 
third  a  reaction  from  the  year  of  doubt  and  re-crea- 
tion. The  boy,  then,  who  suddenly  loses  his  interest 
in  religion  or  work  or  ideals  is  not  to  be  thought  in  a 
desperate  condition,  and  somebody  ought  to  tell  him 
that  he  is  not.  There  is  rtothing  to  do  but  wait  for 
this  condition,  which  is  natural  and  helpful  to  over- 
wrought energies,  to  pass,  as  it  surely  will. 

An  altogether  different  modification  of  child- 
growth  is  the  presence  of  a  very  strong  Personality 
with  or  near  the  child.  Sometimes  it  is  a  playmate 
who  blesses  or  blasts  for  a  time  the  lives  of  a  group  of 


By-Laws  of  Boy-Life  37 

boys.  It  is  a  matter  of  observation  that  every  new 
boy  introdticed  into  a  boys'  club  alters  the  effective- 
ness of  methods  which  have  hitherto  applied  and 
sometimes  makes  a  previously  successful  plan  a  fail- 
ure. "The  King  of  Boyville"  is  no  fiction  in  many  a 
community.  Sometimes  this  personality  is  that  of  an 
adult  man  or  woman  who  seems  to  exercise,  volun- 
tarily or  involuntarily,  an  almost  hypnotic  influence 
upon  children.  Happy  the  leader  of  boys  who  has 
that  power  and  who  can  wisely  use  it!  Warm- 
hearted and  trustful,  the  lad  is  always  easily  seduced. 
His  future  depends  more  upon  the  first  great  friend- 
ship of  his  adolescence  than  upon  any  other  one  in- 
fluence. 

Something  has  been  said  about  the  importance  of 
recognizing  and  following  the  lea'dings  of  th.e  natural 
interests  or   the  instincts  of   boys   in  trying  to-  help  X 
them.    This  must  always  be  done,  but  it  must  not  be    \ 
overdone.     When   social   intercourse   begins  natural    ' 
instincts  begin  to  be  perverted.    It  is  the  best  and  not     \ 
tbe   worst   manifestation   of   his   means   of  guidance      ' 
which  is  to  be  followed.       One  must  distinguish  be- 
tween instincts  and  whims.       The  time  and  place  of 
assembly,  the  rules  and  restrictions  of  membership 
and  the  development  of  the  plans  of  an  organization 
for  boys,  if  left  to  the  boys  themselves,  soon  become  ^ 
entirely  unsatisfactory  to  all  concerned.  ^ 

All  that  I  have  said  shows  the  care  that  must  be 
taken  not  to  misinterpret  boyhood.  Things  do  not  al- 
ways mean  what  they  seem  to  or  even  what  the  psy- 


/ 


38.  The  Boy  Problem 

chologists  suggest.  I  spoke  of  the  curious  articles 
found  in  a  boy's  pocket  as  evidences  of  a  sort  of  fe- 
tishism. They  may  be  nothing  of  the  sort ;  they  may 
be  simply  the  evidences  of  an  elementary  esthetic 
taste.  It  takes  time  and  many  revisings  of  one's 
opinion  to  arrive  at  the  point  where  one  discovers 
that  what  a  boy  says  is  seldom  all  he  means,  and  that 
what  he  does  is  but  a  slight  indication  of  what  he  is. 

The  by-laws  of  Hfe  which  I  have  named  are  largely 
those  which  accompany  childhood  in  which  there  is  a 
real  progression.  It  remains  to  mention  those  excep- 
tions, common  enough  to  necessitate  knowledge  of 
them,  where  the  life  becomes  stationary  or  makes 
retrogression.  These  are  the  stages  of  atavism,  dehn- 
quency  and  defectiveness,  degeneracy  and  idiocy. 

Atavism  is  not  dearly  distinguished  from  heredity. 
Indeed,  Virchow  defined  it  as  "discontinuous  hered- 
ity." It  is  not  in  itself  a  step  toward  degeneracy. 
Probably  we  are  all  atavistic  when  asleep  or  fatigued. 
The  inheritance  may  be  from  a  good  rather  than  an 
evil  ancestor,  of  sturdiness  of  body,  genius  of  mind  or 
purity  of  soul.  Whatever  it  be,  it  is  very  apt  to  show 
itself  during  adolescence.  Then  it  is  that  the  child 
who  has  always  been  like  its  mother  suddenly  grows 
like  its  father  in  looks  or  character,  or,  becoming  an 
entirely  strange  being,  it  is  remembered  or  discov- 
ered that  an  ancestor  two  or  three  generations  back 
had  these  qualities.  A  happy  advantage  may  be  taken 
of  a  favorable  atavism.  If  the  atavism  be  in  the  di- 
rection of  degeneration  now  is  the  time  for  warning 
and  guiding  the  child  in  his  formative  years. 


By-Laws  of  Boy-Life  39 

Adopting  the  biological  theory  of  E.  Ray  Lankester 
as  to  the  three  conditions  which  may  result  from  nat- 
ural selection,   Balance,   Elaboration  and   Degenera- 
tion, Dr.  George  E.  Dawson  has  made  some  suggest- 
ive studies  of  psychic  arrests.    Each  of  these  arrests, 
which  constitute  the  retrogressive  stages  of  defective- 
ness or  degeneracy,  he  explains  as  the  persistence  of 
lower  appetites  and  instincts.     Vagrancy  and  pauper- 
ism  represent   the   persistence   of   the   unproductive 
food-appetites  of  animals,  children  and  savages ;  theft 
is  the  persistence  of  the  predatory  instinct;  gluttony 
and  drunkenness  represent  the  indiscriminate  food- 
appetites;  unchastity  is  a  defectiveness  in  sex-evolu- 
tion; assault  is  a  persistence  of  the  preying  instinct. 
These  arrests,  if  temporary,  are  Uke  the  temporary 
stages  of  physical  growth,  and  are  transformed  if  sur- 
rounding conditions  are  healthful.    If  there  is  a  total 
arrest  of  the  eliminative  process  we  have  the  results 
in  the  crimes  and  offences  of  the  delinquent  classes. 
If  these  lower  qualities  are  not  only  persistent  but  be- 
come diseases,  we  have  moral  monsters.     Regarding 
the  last  class  he  makes  some  most  vigorous  sugges- 
tions.     But  we  are  here  concerned  only  with  his  ad- 
vice as  to  the  treatment  of  the  second.     He  urges  a\ 
recognition  that  the  cause  of  a  large  proportion  of  im-  1 
moral  tendencies  is  an  incomplete  elimination  of  the_J 
sub-human  traits.     "Education  as  a  moral  agency,"  / 
he  says,  "must  be  chiefly  serviceable  during  the  pe-  \ 
riods  of  life  tliat  recapitulate  the  great  groups  of  ge- 
netic instincts  and  habits.      Such  are  the  periods  of 
childhood  and  adolescence." 


40  The  Boy  Problem 

The  practical  advice  which  he  gives  is  most  helpful 
to  those  who  in  trying  to  help  a  number  of  boys  or 
■girls  in  social  groups  in  community  or  church  are 
puzzled  or  disheartened  at  the  presence  of  one  or 
more  partly   delinquent  or  immoral   children.       He 
counsels  that  we  remember  that  these  survivals  can- 
not be  extirpated  in  a  moment.    He  urges  the  great- 
.est  caution  as  to  tempting  these  children  toward  the 
evils  to  which  they  have  tendencies,    because  if    the 
functioning  of  these  immoral  survivals  can  be  kept 
from  occurring,  the  reduction  of  their  power  must  in- 
evitably follow.    If,  especially  during  adolescence,  ap- 
peal is  made  to  the    emotions  and  the  reason,  the 
functions  which  had  retrograded  may  be  transformed 
and   brought  up  to  the  level  of   those  around  them. 
Let  bullying  be   changed  into   chivalry  toward  the 
weak,   destructiveness  into  constructiveness,  general 
obstreperousness  into  enthusiastic  activity.     Johnson 
found  that  the  use  of  play  and  crafts  had  an  especially 
favorable  enlightening  and  awakening  effect  upon  de- 
fective youth. 

These  are  the  lines  of  effort  which  have  already  been 
pressed  as  the  proper  means  of  training  the  wills  of 
normal  children.  We  thus  learn  that  they  are  to  be 
doubly  emphasized  in  strengthening  defective  wills 
and  stimulating  arrested  lives  to  new  growth. 

The  impression  which  this  chapter  will  leave  is  not 
one  of  encouragement  to  those  who  are  about  to  en- 
ter on  work  with  boys  after  taking  a  fifteen  minutes' 
course  in  child-study  or  in  servile  obedience  to  the 


By-Laws  of  Boy-Life  4^ 

limitations  of  some  popular  society  for  the  moral  im^ 
provement  of   the   young.     The   matter   of   spiritual 
therapeutics  demands  powers  of  observation,  collation  I 
and  application  of  a  rare  kind.    It  suggests  a  prepara-  I 
tion    for  work  with  boys  which  is  severe  in  its    de- 
mands, but  none  too  severe  for  labor  with  material  so 
plastic  and  so  sensitiv!e  to  impression.    This  prepara- 
tion may  not  be  necessarily  scholastic.  To  be  a  young 
man  and  thus  to  have  recently  been  a  boy,  or  to  be 
the  father  or  mother  of  boys,  and  to  have  common 
sense,  insight  and  patience — these  are  long  steps  on 
the  way  to  mastery  with  boys.    The  peculiar  disposi^ 
tions  and  vagaries  of  boys  are  most  of  them  the  tern  • 
porary  stages  through  which  they  pass  in  the  strug- 
gle toward  maturity  and  they  suddenly  disappear  at 
the  close  of  the  puberal  epoch,  but  they  are  never- 
theless true  materials  of  character  and  they  must  be 
studied  and  understood   and   used  for  their  higher 
rather  than  their  lower  possibilities.       Other  things 
being  equal,  the  best  way  to  help  a  boy  is  to  under-j 
stand  him. 


Ill 


WAYS    IN    WHICH    BOYS    SPONTANE- 
OUSLY   ORGANIZE    SOCIALLY 

The  interests  of  infancy  are  all  in  the  home.  This 
is  the  parent's  unhampered  opportunity.  During  boy- 
hood the  home  shares  with  school  the  boy's  time.  But 
with  the  development  of  his  social  instinct  by  means 
of  play  new  acquaintanceships  begin  to  use  the  crev- 
ices of  his  time.  First  he  plays  at  home  with  a  chosen 
companion  or  two,  then  he  ventures  forth  to  the 
ball  field  and  the  swimming  hole  with  a  larger  group, 
finally  his  journeys  are  farther,  his  stay  is  longer,  the 
group  is  more  thoroughly  organized  and  a  mob  spirit 
is  apt  to  arise  which  passes  from  unorganized  play 
and  sportive  frolic  to  barbarous  and  destructive  dev- 
iltry, and  we  have,  in  city  and  country,  the  fully  devel- 
oped ''gang." 

Accounts  of  the  doings  of  these  "gangs,"  from  the 
comparative  innocence  of  property  destruction  and 
hoodlumism  to  organized  theft,  assault  and  murder, 
appear  in  the  daily  press  continually.  Hardly  less 
dangerous  in  tendency  are  many  of  the  clubs  which 
more  quietly  meet  indoors.  A  recent  report  of  the 
University  Settlement  of  New  York  City  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  candy  stores  as  informal  social  centers 
which  lead  to  the  pool  room,  the  saloon,  the  cheap 
show  and  the  club  room,  and  to  "Recreation  Clubs," 


Boys*  Spontaneous  Organizations  43 

where,  a  younger  member  reports,  "they  have  kissing] 
all  through  pleasure  time,  and  use  slang  language,"! 
and — the  ^lembers  are  from  14  to  18 — "they  don^tl 
behave  nice  between  young  ladies." 

Ofttimes  watchful  parents  can  prevent  the  evolu"^ 
tion  of  the  social  instinct  from  reaching  the  mob-stage  f, 
or  the  manifestation  of  lawlessness  by  redeeming  and 
transforming  these  energies,  but  the  fact  that  this  is 
not  everywhere  being  done — and  this  not  among  the 
poor  entirely,  either — gives  room  for  new  and  vigor- 
ous forms  of  educative  philanthropy.  » 

Convincing   proofs   that  this   early  social   instinct 
craves  development  as  much  as  that  of  adult  man,  and 
suggestive  indications  of  the  ways  in  which  it  turns 
and  may  best  be  turned  are  seen  in  a  study  of  those  \ 
interesting  organizations  which  boys  themselves  spon-   I 
taneously  create.     Dr.  Henry  D.  Sheldon's  question- 
naire as  to  the  spontaneous  institutional  activities  of 
American  children  furnishes  me  my  figures ;  but   I 
have  arranged  them  to  bear  simply  upon  the  point  we 
are  considering,  adolescent  boyhood.     How  general  ^ 
the  expression  of  this  social  instinct  is,  is  seen  in  the  L 
fact  that  of  1,034  responses  of  boys  from  10  to  16,  851  I 
were  members  of  such  societies.    This  did  not  include 
societies  formed  for  boys  by  elders,  and  it  did  include 
many  boys  who  from  isolation  never  had  the  slightest 
chance  for  such  society  making. 

The  study  of  the  societies  which  children  spontane- 
ously form  ought  to  be  more  suggestive  than  that  of 
those  which  elders  in  their  adult  wisdom  or  ignorance 


/ 


\ 


I 


44  The  Boy  Problem 

form  for  them.  If  will  is  only  interest,  interest  should 
be  the  best  criterion  of  how  to  help  the  will.  From 
1,022  papers  collected  there  were  reported  862  socie- 
ties. 64  boys  belonged  to  more  than  one  society.  The 
ages  were  10  to  17.    Of  623  societies,  fully  described: 

Those  having  secrets  numbered  23  or  3^  per  cent. 

Social  clubs  (for  "good  times")  numbered  28  or 
434  per  cent. 

Industrial  organizations  numbered  56  or  83/2  per 
cent. 

Philanthropic  associations  numbered  10  or  i^^  per 
cent. 

Literary,  art,  and  musical  clubs  numbered  28  or 
4%  per  cent. 

Predatory  societies  (migratory,  building,  hunting, 
fighting,  preying)  numbered  105  or  17  per  cent. 

Athletic  and  game  clubs  numbered  379  or  61  per 
cent. 

The  ages  11,  12  and  13  were  the  ages  of  the  largest 
number  of  societies  formed,  the  numbers  being:  at  8, 
28;  at  9,  44;  at  10,  118;  at  11,  155;  at  12,  164;  at 
13,  188;  at  14,  90;  at  15,  80;  at  16,  34;  at  17,  11. 

We  need  not  treat  these  figures  so  seriously  as  to 
consider  them  everywhere  infallible,  but  they  certainly 
confirm  the  observations  which  we  have  made  our- 
selves. 

We  notice  the  following  facts : 

I.  The  period  of  greatest  activity  of  these  societies 
is  between  8  and  15,  over  87  per  cent  being  formed 
during  that  period,  only  7  per  cent  before  10,  and 


Boys'  Spontaneous  Organisations  45 

only  I  per  cent  being  formed  at  17.  This  is  accounted 
for  by  the  growth  of  the  social  disposition  with  adoles- 
cence and,  in  a  lesser  degree,  by  the  fact  that  some  of 
the  earlier  societies  persisted  later,  and  by  the  fact 
that  in  later  years  the  church  and  school  societies 
formed  by  elders  take  the  place  of  many  voluntary 
societies. 

2.  Physical  activity  is  the  key-note  of  these  socie- 
ties at  all  ages.  The  predatory  and  athletic  societies 
number  yy  per  cent.  Add  to  these  the  industrial  and 
we  have  85^  per  cent  of  the  whole. 

3.  Thejjterary,  ^rt  and  musical  interests  are  very 
small,  while  the  philanthropic  and  religious  are  infini- 
tesimal. 

4.  The  interest  in  athletic  societies  increases  by 
leaps  from  8  to  i.^,  and  then  diminishes  with  even 
greater  rapidity  toward  the  end,  while  the  interest  in 
library  societies,  though  never  very  large,  grows  with 
maturity.  The  predatory  societies  are  at  their  highest 
,at  II,  and  thence  gradually  disappear. 

The  boys'  societies  are  largely  summer  societies. 
Had  the  figures  been  so  classified  as  to  show  this  ac- 
curately we  should  perhaps  find  that  the  literary  and 
philanthropic  features  do  really  have  some  importance 
in.  tlie  months  when  outdoor  activity  ,is  restrained. 
With  this  limitation  recognized,  we  must  still  believe 
that  physical  activity  is  the  interest  central  through- 
out the  year. 

5.  Girls  and  boys  do  not  naturally  nro-aniT-f^  j-f^- 
gether.    Dr.  Sheldon's  paper  shows  that  the  interests 


46  The  Boy  Problem 

of  boys  and  girls  in  their  societies  are  nowhere  paral- 
lel. Girls  form  three  times  as  many  secret  societies  as 
boys,  five  times  as  many  social  societies,  three  times 
as  many  industrial,  twice  as  many  philanthropic,  and 
three  times  as  many  literary,  while  the  boys  form  four 
times  as  many  predatory  and  seven  times  as  many 
athletic  societies  as  the  girls.  Physical  activity  was 
the  feature  in  10  per  cent  of  the  girls'  as  against  yy 
per  cent  of  the  boys'  societies.  384  girls  as  against 
257  boys  were  found  in  societies  formed  for  children 
by  adults.  "Girls  are  more  nearly  governed  by  adult 
motives  than  boys.  They  organize  to  promote  so- 
ciability, to  advance  their  interests,  to  improve  them- 
selves and  others.  Boys  are  nearly  primitive,  man : 
they  associate  to  hunt,  fish,  roam,  fight,  and  to  contest 
physical  superiority  with  each  other." 

If  these  facts  mean  anything  in  the  way  of  instruc- 
tion, they  mean  this : 

I.     Boys  should  be  sought  just  before  their  own 

social  development  tends  to  become  dangerous,  at 

abou|  TO.  and  held  until  the  organizing  craze  is  over 

and  the  years  of  adolescence  are  well  past.    Dr.  Shel- 

'  don  found  257  boys  in  societies  formed  for  them  by 

adlilts,  of  whom  all  but  40  were  from  10  to  15,  but 

only  7  of  whom  were  beyond  15.     Is  it  not  almost 

more  dangerous  to  hold  a  boy  till  the  most  critical 

year  of  his  life,  and  then  let  him  go  than  not  to  touch 

him  at  all? 

I       2.  Physical  activity  must  be  made  the  basis  of  social 

V  work  for  bovs,  if  it  is  to  reach  and  hold  their  natural 


\ 


Boys'  Spontaneous  Organisations  47 

interests.  Other  things  may  be  accepted  or  endured 
by  them,  but  this  is  what  they  care  for.  A  contact 
which  begins  with  athletics,  walks,  physical  develop- 
ment and  manual  training  may  ripen  into  the  literary,w,' 
the  scientific,  the  ethical  and  the  religious  influences. 
But  it  would  seem  wise  to  utilize  the  ruder  instincts 
which  are  on  the  surface  before  reaching  down  to  the 
deeper  ones. 

3.  Wherever  possible,  girls  and  boys  should  be 
organized  separately.  Before  adolescence  they  are  | 
not  interested  in  the  same  things  nor  in  each  other.  In  j 
all  social  work  constant  intimacy  between  maturing  |j 
b(>ys  and  girls  fosters  an  undesirable  precocity  and  in- 
troduces unnecessarily  perplexing  problems.  The 
boys  should  have  male  or  at  least  virile  leaders.  The 
women  who  succeed  in  work  with  boys  are  usually 
tliose  who  can  do  something  the  boys  Hke  to  do  better 
than  they  can.  The  ideals  and  capabilities  of  most 
women  leaders  do  not  point  to  the  highest  efficiency 
with  boys  of  the  adolescent  period*,  while  a  manly  man 
with  some  slight  athletic  prowess,  a  wiUingness  to 
answer  questions  and  patience  to  guide  by  adaptability 
rather  than  by  domineering,  can  do  almost  anything 
with  a  group  of  boys. 

Two  facts  that  have  not  been  mentioned  must  be 
named,  which  will  appear  in  new  light  from  the 
knowledge  gathered  in  the  first  chapter.  •  One  is  the 
fact  that  the  instincts  upon  which  the  activities  even 
of  the  worst  "gang"  are  built  are  the  innocent  and 
natural  ones  of  adolescence.  To  get  together,  to  work 


48  The  Boy  Problem 

off  physical  energy,  to  roam,  to  contest,  to  gather 
treasures  and  meet  new  experiences,  and — a  httle  later 
— to  enjoy  female  society :  these  are  not  in  themselves 
mischievous  desires.  Again,  when  child-societies  are 
at  their  best  they  often  do  very  charming  and  admi- 
rable things.  They  build,,  they  work  together,  they 
parade,  they  revive  old-folk  games,  they  imitate  the 
employments  and  festivals  of  their  elders.  As  Colozza 
tells  us,  all  ''child-societies  are  play-societies.  Play  is 
a  great  social  stimulus.  The  lively  pleasure  which  is 
felt  in  play  is  the  prime  motive  which  unites  children." 
We  see  here  not  only  the  fact  that  play  educates  in- 
dividually, upon  which  I  shall  say  more  later,  but  that 
it  educates  socially.  However  serious  may  be  the 
purpose  which  adults  have  in  forming  societies  among 
children,  I  think  it  to  be  essential  to  approach  them 
joyously,  even  gaily.  Let  there  be  even  in  the  in- 
strument of  highest  spiritual  aim  not  only  a  play- 
method  but  the  play-spirit.  Otherwise  the  child  must 
feel,  "Oh,  that  tiresome  grown-up  person-with-a- 
mission!  Does  he  not  know  that  I  live  in  a  world  of 
play?  Why  will  he  drag  me  off  to  his  world  of  work, 
instead  of  coming  into  mine?"  The  instincts  which 
already  exist  in  child-societies  are  those  which  we  are 
to  imitate  and  transform  to  their  best  uses. 

The  temporariness  of  these  societies,  which  is  almost 
universal,  I  should  say,  is  interpreted  by  the  truth  we 
have  learned:  that  the  SQcial-Goasciousness  is  not  yet 
complete.  It  never  is,  in  many  of  us.  Not  every  man 
is  a  clubable  man.    Jealousy  is  the  explosive  that  most 


Boys'  Spontaneous  Organisations  49 

frequently  destroys  the  child's  club.  If  there  is  any 
organization  at  all  it  is  apt  to  be  that  of  an  unlimited 
monarchy.  When  a  second  boy  wants  to  be  monarch 
the  trouble  begins.  The  matter  is  often  settled,  as  in 
a  colony  of  bees,  by  the  new  monarch  withdrawing 
with  his  own  satellites  and  forming  a  new  kingdom. 
The  unsatisfactoriness  of  these  frequent  changes  and 
the  desire  for  organization  that  shall  be  permanent 
enough  for  enjoyment  explains  some  of  the  willing- 
ness which  boys  show  for  adult  intervention.  This  is 
\\'hy  I  think  questions  of  leadership  and  parliamentary 
<^  law,  which  are  so  vexing  at  this  age,  should  be  firmly 
dismissed  by  an  adult  leader,  and  his  organization 
built  upon  the  higher  social  frame  to  which  he  has 
himself  attained,  that  of  the  democracy,  with  real, 
complete  but  unobtrusive  leadership  in  himself. 

There  are  a  good  many  other  things,  odd,  humorous 
or  suggestive,  about  the  spontaneous  institutions  of 
boyhood.  I  spoke  in  the  last  chapter  of  the  clan- 
ethics  of  the  "gang."  This  tribe-loyalty  usually  leads 
to  rivalry  between  gangs.  Sometimes  it  is  ''town  and 
gown;"  sometimes  it  is  between  the  boys  of  neigh- 
boring cities,  as,  a  few  years  ago,  when  a  crowd  of 
Charlestown  and  a  crowd  of  Cambridge  boys  met  on 
the  bridge  that  was  then  between  the  two  cities,  it 
always  meant  a  fight ;  most  often  it  is  between  neigh- 
borhoods or  streets.  The  social  settlement  clubs  are 
very  careful  to  consider  these  local  jealousies  by  not 
forming  a  club  from  more  than  one  neighborhood.  I 
never  knew  this  to  be  considered  in  a  church,  but  I 


50  The  Boy  Problem 

have  seen  instances  where  it  would  have  been  most 
•  desirable  to  do  so.  These  jealousies  might  not  only 
f  be  recognized,  but  their  contests  turned  to  more 
I  profitable  emulations.  There  is  general  testimony 
that  it  is  difficult  to  do  good  social  work  with  poor 
»^and  rich  boys  at  the  same  time  and  place.  I  believe 
that  respect  of  others  won  in  emulation  and  even  in 
fighting  is  the  seed  of  affection  and  awakened  kinship. 
It  is  a  proverb  that  "Two  boys  never  can  become 
chums  till  they  have  had  a  fight."  In  some  ways  I 
believe  these  emulations  between  boys  ol  different 
classes  can  be  produced  and  controlled  to  the  advan- 
tage of  both.  I  believe  from  experience  that  it  is 
possible  in  this  age  of  ready  social  interests  to  create 
artificially  a  "gang"  out  of  a  group  of  hitherto  unre- 
lated boys  which  shall  develop  passionate  friendships 
and  loyalties,  constitute  a  lifelong  fellowship  and  be- 
come a  microcosm  of  the  social  ideal.  The  summer 
camp  sustained  by  the  rich  boys  of  the  Groton  School 
for  the  benefit  of  poor  boys  gives  some  encourage- 
ment in  this  direction.  The  democratic  influence  of 
athletics  in  our  pubHc  schools  is,  I  believe,  one  of  the 
saving  forces  of  the  republic. 

In  passing  from  the  consideration  of  the  spontane- 

-^y*ous  groupings  of  boys  we  may  remark  that  soon  after 

\l  sixteen  the  social  instinct  takes  quite  a  new  form,  in 

I   the  "pairing"  tendency.    The  boy  in  his  first  love  is 

j   always  found  with  one  chosen  girl ;  each  boy  also  has 

his  chum.    Two  chums  often  combine  with  two  girls, 

and  we  have  a  clique.     These  pairs  and  cliques  are 


Boys^  Spontaneous  Organisations  ^t 

sore  interruptions  to  the  continuity  especially  of 
church  societies  for  young  people.  These  anti-social 
tendencies,  arising  so  late  and  so  unexpectedly,  are 
baffling  because  they  are  among  those  who  have  ar- 
rived at  a  maturing  and  independent  age.  Though 
difficult,  they  are  not  discouraging,  for  they  mark  the 
rise  of  the  great  loves  and  friendships  of  Hfe. 

The  social  instinct  thus  describes  a  circle.  The 
phases  of  childhood,  adolescence  and  maturity  are 
these  :  domestic,  anti-domestic,  domestic ;  education  by 
one's  elders,  by  one's  contemporaries,  by  one's  chil- 
dren. Life  swings  out  from  the  home  and  back  to  it 
again.  During  the  anti-domestic  age  of  adolescence 
social  opportunities  are  greatest.  The  return  to  the 
home  with  maturity  and  the  subsequent  giving  birth 
to  children  begin  a  new  circle  in  another  generation.  / 


II 


IV 


SOCIAL    ORGANIZATIONS    FORMED     FOR 
BOYS    BY    ADULTS 

As  detailed  descriptions  of  the  many  methods  that 
are  being  used  to  help  boys  are  found  in  the  literature 
of  the  different  movements,  it  seems  sufficient  to  give 
the  briefest  analysis  of  the  worth  of  most  of  them  with 
a  fuller  discussion  of  plans  that  are  especially  sug- 
gestive. (See  the  Chart  at  the  end  of  the  book).  For 
this  analysis  I  have  devised  a  system  of  rubrics  sug- 
gested by  a  table  in  Mr.  George  E.  Johnson's  *'Edu- 
cation  through  Plays."     The  rubrics  are  as  follows: 

I.  Age  to  which  the  method  is  in  its  present  form 
appropriate,  indicated  by  numbers  from  lo  to  17. 

II.  Number  of  boys  to  which  the  method  applies, 
indicated  by  numbers. 

III.  Kind  of  education  afforded,  indicated  by  let- 
ters, the  amount  shown  by  increasing  sizes  of  type,  as 
p,  p,  and  P. 

p — physical  (bodily  strength) 
ath — athletic  (bodily  agility) 
m — manual  (mastery  of  hand) 
i — industrial  (mastery  of  trade) 
c — civic 
1 — literary 

art — artistic  (including  dramatic,  literary  and  pic- 
torial) 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     53 

s — scientific 

alt — altruistic  (social  and  philanthropic) 

e — ethical 

r — religious 

IV.  The  Instincts  made  use  of,  the  emphasis — 
small,  moderate  or  large — being  indicated  by  increas- 
ing sizes  of  type,  as  acq,  acq,  ACQ : 

acq — acquisitiveness,  the  collecting  and  appropriat- 
ing instinct. 

chs — chastity 

cln — cleanliness 

con — constructiveness 

cur — curiosity,  desire  to  find  out 

drm — dramatic  instinct,  desire  to  personify,  imagi- 
native imitativeness 

eml — emulativeness 

imt — imitativeness 

love 

loy — loyalty,  the  mixed  instinct  of  love,  proprietor- 
ship and  responsibility  (as  felt  in  the  college  frater- 
nity) 

phy — physical  activity 

play 

pug — pugnacity,  the  desire  to  overcome 

soc — sociability,  the  desire  to  be  with  others  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  love-instinct,  which  involves  the  desire 
to  serve 

V.  Part  of  the  boy  trained,  the  value  of  the  train- 
ing indicated  by  sizes  of  type  as  before : 

b — body 


54  7"^^^  ^oy  Problem 

V 

1 — intellect 

f — ^feeling 

w — will 

r — religious  nature 

VI.  Regard  paid  to  the  Temperaments,  the  amount 
of  regard  to  each  indicated  by  sizes  of  type : 

sang — sanguine 

sent — sentimental  (melancholic) 

chol — choleric 

phleg — phlegmatic 

VII.  An  estimate  of — rather,  a  guess  at — ^the  pro- 
portion of  the  boy's  interests  excited  (with  the  pre- 
sumption that  it  is  possible  socially  to  excite  50  of 
100),  the  amount  indicated  in  numbers  meaning  per 
cents. 

This  analysis  is  based  on  the  belief  that,  no  matter 
what  the  announced  aim  of  any  form  of  help,  the 
^problem  is  one,  namely,  that  of  manhood-making.  So, 
while  the  list  is  classified  by  certain  general  character- 
istics, each  plan  is  measured  by  its  applicability  to  the 
entire  boy. 

Of  course  this  chart  is  not  scientifically  accurate, 
and  very  likely  there  is  some  personal  bias  in  its  ap- 
preciations of  value.  You  can  change  these  to  suit 
yourself.  But  if  a  plan  has  any  worth,  this  gridiron  of 
qualifications  ought  to  show  of  what  sort  it  is. 

I  wish  you  would  go  over  this  table  carefully,  read- 
ing it  first  across  the  page  to  analyze  each  form  of 
work  by  itself  and  then  taking  two  forms  of  work  at 
a  time  and  making  comparison.     Note  in  the  first 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     55 

column  which  clubs  are  applicable  to  boys  all  the  way 
along  and  which  reach  only  early  or  late  adolescence. 
In  the  next  column  see  which  clubs  work  on  the 
group  and  which  on  the  mass  idea.     Under  "Kinds 
of  Education"  see  how  few  furnish  athletic  or  physical 
training.     The  columns  on  the  Instincts,  Part  Devel- 
oped and  Temperaments  Regarded  should  be  studied 
together.     Of  the  28  methods  only  8  reach  as  many 
as  10  of  the  15  instincts  named.    In  how  few  are  the  ' 
athletic  and  play-instincts  recognized  at  all.     Notice  « 
that  the  physical  and  manual  methods  regard  the  chol-  ' 
eric  temperament,  while  the  religious  methods  reach  I 
mostly   the   sanguine    and    sentimental.      I    supposeV) 
phlegmatic  boys  are  not  so  numerous  nor  so  social  as^ 
others.     Very   few   of   the    methods   named   appeal 
strongly  to  them. 

You  may  disagree  with  the  estimates  in  the  last 
column,  but  it  is  graphic  as  showing  how  much  a  boy 
with  all  the  instincts  of  a  boy  will  be  interested  in  the 
several  plans.  Some  of  the  plans  which  show  the 
largest  per  cents  are  without  the  religious  element.^ 
The  home  is  counted  as  the  educational  institute  that 
most  interests  the  boy,  its  only  imperfection  at  its  best 
being  that  it  does  not  afford  the  larger  social  fellow- 
ship. 

Nearly  every  plan  has  its  one  strong  point,  a 
few  have  several  good  ideals,  some  could  be  easily 
strengthened  by  imitation  of  others,  and  some  would 
be  worth  while  only  as  supplementary.  This  is  true 
of  all  the  civic  and  ethical  methods,  I  think. 


56  The  Boy  Problem 

No  one  is  "the  best."  The  personality  of  the  leader 
counts  so  much  that  many  a  plan  that  "works"  in  one 
place  will  not  do  in  another,  and  such  is  the  fickleness 
of  the  adolescent  boy  that  no  one  plan  is  all-inclusive. 
There  is  no  patent  way  of  saving  boys. 

The  various  methods  which  have 'been  mentioned 
divide  into  two  classes:  those  which  have  and  those 
which  have  not  the  religious  element.     We  have  the 
methods  used  in  churches  and  the  methods  used  out- , 
side  churches.     Some  will  tell  us  that  this  division  \ 
is  also  a  caste  line,  and  that  the  community  clubs  reach 
street  boys  while  the  church  clubs  reach  only  boys 
from  good  homes.     I  fear  this  is  often  true.     The  ex- 
act fact  is  that  the  community  clubs  in  ignoring  the 
religious  element  are  able  to  reach  Protestant,  Ro- 
manist and  Hebrew,  which  no  single  church  can  do.  . 
If  one  believes  the  community  clubs  are  therein  faulty  / 
he  must  also  remember  that  they  are  more  widely  in- 1 
clusiva     The  community  clubs  are  by  no  means  an- 
ti-religious, and  are  heartily  willing  to  encourage  their 
boys  to  supplement  their  club-life  with  church  influ- 
ences.    The  two  types  must  be  recognized,  and  each 
may  well  be  more  tolerant  of.  the  other.     In  the  com- 
munity clubs  we  study  every  form  of  pedagogy  except 
the  religious.     In  the  church  clubs  religious  peda- 
gogy is  central,  and  the  other  forms  are  usually  sub- 
sidiary.    The  former  propose  to  make  good  men,  im- 
pelled by  every   true   motive   except  the   religious, 
which  they  leave  the  church  to  give.       The  latter 
should  propose  to  make  good  men,  impelled  by  every 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      57 

true  motive,  including  the  religious.  Probably  the 
community  club  can  make  the  more  boys  good  and 
the  church  club  can  make  the  fewer  boys  better. 

Among  the   non-religious  or  "community  clubs" 
which  exist  in  our  cities  we  find  two  theories  which       1 
seem  to  be  radically  different.     The  "mass  clubs"  (or,  / 
as  they  used  to  be  called  from  their  originator,  the 
"ColHns   Clubs"),  have   one,  and   the  "group   clubs"  \^ 
(usually  in  connection  with  social  settlements),  have 
the  other.    I  think  Mr.  William  A.  Clark,  the  Head  of 
Gordon  House,  has  fairly  stated  the  settlement  view : 

"The  boys'  club  of  twenty  years  ago  was  a  very  sim- 
ple affair.  The  membership  in  such  a  club  varied  from 
.800  to  2,500.  Any  boy  in  the  city  could  be  admitted 
J*",  to  the  club.  The  workers  consisted  of  a  doorkeeper, 
librarian  and  superintendent.  During  the  club  ses- 
sion the  superintendent  was  obliged  to  walk  about  the 
rooms  as  a  moral  policeman.  Occasionally  visitors 
from  the  various  churches  came  to  assist  by  playing 
games  with  the  boys.  Later  a  few  industrial  classes, 
such  as  carpentry,  clay-modeling,  wood-carving,  cob- 
bling, typesetting,  etc.,  were  added.  A  penny  savings 
bank  was  a  leading  feature  of  this  sort  of  club,  and 
occasional  entertainments.  Finally,  with  this  plan,  it 
is  possible  to  have  an  exceedingly  large  membership. 
This  in  itself  is  a  strong  feature  in  the  minds  of  many.  ; 
Large  figures  look  prosperous  in  a  report.  « 

"With  the  advent  of  the  university  settlement  a  new 
plan  of  club  came  into  being.  During  the  past  five 
years  the   majority   of  boys'   clubs  throughout  the 


SB  The  Boy  Problem 

country  are  now  being  formed  on  what  may  be  termed 
the  settlement  club  plan  or  on  some  modification  of 
I  it.  It  differs  from  the  old  plan  radically,  in  that  it  is 
I  always  very  much  smaller.  The  whole  drift  of  boys' 
club  organization  for  the  past  ten  years  has  been  to- 
ward smaller  clubs.  The  most  characteristic  plan  of 
a  Settlement  Boys'  Club  in  brief  is  this :  A  group  of 
boys,  eight  or  ten,  usually  of  the  same  gang,  all  com- 
ing from  the  immediate  neighborhood.  This  neigh- 
borhood idea  is,  as  you  know,  one  of  the  basal  princi- 
ples of  the  settlement.  Such  a  group  usually  meets 
once  or  twice  a  week  in  charge  of  a  leader.  The  pro- 
gram for  the  little  club  varies  with  the  taste  of  the 
leader  and  the  boys.  The  leader,  as  a  rule,  is  a  per- 
son of  refinement. 

"The  legitimate  aim  of  the  large  club  is  to  keep  as 
many  boys  as  possible  off  the  street,  giving  them  a 
cheerful  room  with  games  and  books.  The  aim  of 
the  settlement  is  to  take  a  small  group,  and  through  a 
refined,  tactful  leader  'with  a  social  soul,'  as  one  man 
'  expresses  it,  moraUze  these  boys  by  the  power  of 
friendship.  Th^  superintendent  of  a  club  of  1,500, 
assuming  that  he  is  equally  as  well  educated  and  re- 
fined as  the  settlement  type  of  man,  can  only  be  a 
friend  to  these  boys  in  theory.  Friendship  means 
knowledge.  No  man  can  know  1,500  boys.  Most 
workers  find  it  hard  enough  to  know  ten  boys  well. 

"And  yet  the  esprit  de  corps  of  100  boys,  for  in- 
stance, is  different  from  the  esprit  de  corps  of  a  group 
of  ten.  Personally  I  believe  that  the  group  idea  and 
the  mass  idea  should  be  combined  in  the  plan  of  the 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     59    . 

club.    The  old  type  of  club  has  features  of  strength] 
which  should  not  be  lost  in  the  new  plan."  ' 

Thus  far  the  group  clubs  seem  to  have  the  advan- 
tage. They  are  further  strong  in  that  the  boys'  club 
is  often  one  of  an  ascending  group  of  clubs,  embrac- 
ing the  whole  family  and  giving*!  a  place  into  which 
the  boy  may  graduate.  In  thoroughness,  compre-  7 
hensiveness  and  the  power  of  personality  the  group  j 
club  is  a  model  social  instrument.  -^ 

The  mass  club,  however,  is  open  every  night  to       , 
every  boy.    To  keep  a  boy  off  the  street  every  night     // 
in  the  week  is  what  the  mass  clubs  actually  do.     "If    v\ 
we  can  only  keep  the  boy  where  he  can  be  found  when  ^ 
he  is  wanted,"  says  Thomas  Chew,  "we  are  doing  a 
good  deal."     The  mass  clubs  propose  to  reach  the  y 
t  oughest  boys  in  the  city ;  the  group  clubs  as  frankly 
do  not.     It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  street  arab  is  un- 
likely to  enter  voluntarily  under  the  surveillance  and 
patronage  of  a  refined  lady  or  gentleman  from  the 
Back  Bay  in  a  small  room,  and  that  while  the  superin- 
tendent of  the  mass  club  may  not  know  each  arab  per- 
sonally, each  arab  will  know  him.     Mr.  Chew  argues 
that  as  the  influence  of  Washington  and  Lincoln  ex- 
tended farther  than  the  limits  of  their  personal  ac- 
quaintatice,  so  the  boys'  club  superintendent  is  the 
hero  and  guide  to  a  much  larger  circle  than  he  can 
personally  know.     It  is  also  true  that  the  mass  club 
superintendent  serves  a  much  longer  time  in  one  club 
than  does  the  volunteer  settlement  worker  and  that  he 
knows  the  boy  on  the  street,  in  the  school  yard,  and 


6o  The  Boy  Problem 

in  the  police  court  as  well  as  in  the  orthodox  way  in 
the  home.  The  introduction  of  a  fine  building  or 
equipment  in  the  section  of  the  very  poor  has  also 
sometimes  seemed  to  estrange  the  very  class  for  which 
it  was  provided,  and  has  caused  its  activities  to  be  re- 
garded as  charitable  doles  rather  than  as  social 
brotherhood. 

The  two  forms  of  work  seem  to  be  learning  from 
each  other.  The  mass  plan  has  the  advantage  of 
bringing  a  very  large  number  of  needy  boys  under 
wholesome  influence,  removing  them  from  the  street 
and  filHng  their  minds  and  hands  too  full  for  the  or- 
ganization of  mischief.  By  using  the  mass  idea  first 
the  suspicions  and  feelings  of  restraint  that  would  be 
excited  by  the  confinement  of  a  group  are  done  away 
with,  the  wilder  physical  instincts  are  satisfied  first 
and  time  is  given  the  boy  to  settle  down  to  the  quieter 
group  methods.  Thus  some  settlements  keep  their 
I '  new  boys  in  the  gymnasium  and  the  large  assembly- 
room  for  a  time  before  admitting  them  to  the  group 
clubs.  On  the  other  hand  the  mass  club  director 
does  not  deal  with  boys  in  the  mass  because  he  likes 
to.  As  far  as  he  sees  the  need  of  individual  workers 
who  will  divide  the  mass  into  groups  and  as  far  as  he 
succeeds  in  getting  such  workers  he  is  doing  so  and 
is  thus  approaching  the  group-plan  of  the  settlement 
clubs.  The  bdst  mass  club  workers  reach  the  homes 
of  their  boys  as  regularly  as  does  the  average  pastor 
those  of  his  people.  It  is  equally  true  that  many  a 
group  club  leader  sighs  for  the  splendid  esprit  de  corps 
of  the  larger  club,  where  the  boys  never  feel  that  they 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     6i 

are  being  patronized  and  really  believe  they  own  the 
whole  building. 

Sometimes  the  group  idea  is  carried  to  an  extreme. 
I  once  visited  a  settlement  at  night  and  asked  to  see 
its  boys'  work.  We  went  to  the  top  story  of  a  build- 
ing and,  after  a  search  for  a  key,  succeeded  in  entering 
a  dark  room  where  there  wxre  some  sloyd  benches, 
which  I  was  assured  were  used  on  ''some  other  even- 
ings." A  group  of  young  men  was  also  seen  in 
another  small  room.  No  doubt  a  few  boys  were  be- 
ing very  thoroughly  helped,  but  somehow  it  seemed 
like  knitting-work.  On  the  same  evening  in  an  old 
ramshackle  building  in  the  same  city  a  hundred  and 
fifty  boys  were  crowding  the  rooms  to  the  doors  with 
their  games,  gymnastics  and  classes  in  a  mass  club, 
and  were  doing  so  every  night  in  the  week.  On  the 
other  hand  they  were  being  graduated  into  the  street 
in  droves  at  sixteen  for  lack  of  room  and  of  any  wise 
institution  to  receive  them.  Here  we  see  the  two 
dangers — in  one  plan,  of  coddling  a  few,  in  the  other, 
of  providing  no  resources  for  the  many  until  the  ages 
of  immaturity  and  special  temptation  are  over. 

Both  kinds  of  clubs  are  reaching  out  rapidly  into 
new  fields  of  work  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  modifica- 
tions are  soon  to  appear  in  many  institutions.  Both 
are  emphasizing  and  receiving  splendid  results  from 
summer  work  in  club  farms,  excursions,  camps,  club 
gardens  and  vacation  schools.  The  poHce  court 
work  of  the  mass  club  director  is  believed  to  be  form- 
ing an  important  influence  upon  those  who  are  at  the 


62  The  Boy  Problem 

brink  of  a  criminal  career.  The  group  clubs,  again, 
are  strengthening  their  groups  by  insisting  that  the 
volunteer  workers  who  are  leaders  shall  regard  their 
work  not  as  a  sentimental  fad  or  temporary  mission 
but  that  they  remain  long  enough  to  let  their  refined 
personalities  avail  for  something  of  permanence. 

At  no  place  more  than  at  Lincoln  House,  Boston, 
partly  perhaps  because  this  institution  sprang  out  of 
a  boys*  club,  has  the  class  and  club  method  of  educa- 
tion been  elaborately  developed.  Indeed,  this  has 
become  so  characteristic  that  the  House  is  now  a  great 
evening  school  rather  than  a  settlement.  Yet  the 
settlement  ideas  of  fellowship  and  mutuality  are  still 
retained  by  the  social  workers,  and  in  the  classes  the 
thoughts  of  play  and  informality  are  so  much  retained 
that  they  are  given  the  name  of  Play  Work  Guilds. 
The  course  for  boys  in  creative  work  in  arts  and  crafts 
after  leaving  the  kindergarten  age  is  as  follows: 

"Age  6  to  8:  Advanced  kindergarten  course 
(Course  H)  in  clay. 

**Age  8  to  10 :  Course  HI  clay,  perhaps  varied  with 
paper  sloyd, 

"Age  ID  to  II  :  Simple  fret  work,  varied  with 
Course  H  in  paper  sloyd,  or  Course  IV  in  clay. 

"Age  II  to  12:  Fret  work,  Course  II,  varied  with 
Course  I  in  cardboard  sloyd. 

"Age  12  to  13:  Wood  sloyd,  Course  II  in  card- 
board, freehand  drawing,  advanced  course  in  clay. 

"Age  13  to  14:  Simple  cabinet-making,  wood-carv- 
ing, Venetian  iron  work,  basket-making,  printing, 
lettering,  drawing,  water-color  work. 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     63 

"Age  14  to  17:  Cabinet-making,  leather  work,  let- 
tering, printing,  weaving,  metal  work,  water-color 
work,  drawing." 

These  boys  have  also  the  gymnasium  and  the  small 
group  boys'  club  (8  to  10  boys)  in  which,  as  they  may 
choose,  they  take  up  collections,  scrap-book  making, 
travel-study,  simple  fancy  work,  animal  study,  and  an 
endless  variety  of  things  which  teacher  and  boys  can 
pursue  together. 

The  ideal  is  to  find  new  materials  for  applying  the 
Froebel  and  Sloyd  principles  in  the  classes  and  thus 
bridge  the  industrial  work  of  the  kindergarten  and 
the  advanced  cabinet-making  and  leather  work  by  a 
continuous,  creative  industrial  and  art  education  for 
children  of  all  ages,  and  in  the  clubs  to  relieve  the  edu- 
cational seriousness  and  the  necessity  of  confinement 
and  application  by  more  lively  and  spontaneous  social 
intercourse.  The  two  so  interlock  that  it  is  hard  to 
tell  at  times  which  is  class  and  which  club  work, 
0(  In  large  clubs,  especially  street  boys'  clubs,  two  im- 
portant things  should  not  be  neglected.  One  thing  is 
to  arrange  some  way  by  which  the  boys  as  they  get 
crowded  out  of  the  club  by  age  shall  be  graduated  into 
some  other  wholesome  organization,  such  as  the  Y. 
M.  C.  A.  The  other  thing  is  for  the  director  to  afford 
an  opportunity  for  religious  care  by  furnishing  to 
each  priest  and  pastor  in  the  community  the  list  of 
boys  of  each  church  who  attend  his  club.  The  club 
should  supplement  itself  in  this  way  by  affiliation  withy 
every  possible  moral  agency. 


64  The  Boy  Problem 

A  very  deep  question  is  as  to  the  relation  of  all  this 
work  to  that  fundamental  institution,  the  home.  The 
craze  for  organization  and  cooperative  industry,  ap- 
parent among  society  people  even  more  than  among 
the  poor  and  among  adults  more  than  among  chil- 
dren, suggests  the  dire  possibility  that  human  life  may 
sometime  become  one  great  club-system.  As  to 
street  boys  it  seems  sufficient  to  reply  that  they  v^ill 
not  stay  at  home,  anyway.  With  Frank  S.  Mason, 
founder  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Boys'  Club,  we  may  say: 
"It  is  a  true  and  trite  saying  that  a  good  home  is  a 
better  place  for  a  boy  at  night  than  a  boys'  club.  If 
all  homes  were  perfect  homes,  then  would  the  boys' 
club  be  useless :  if  it  were  possible  to  reform  many 
homes,  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  form  boys' 
clubs;  it  if  were  possible  for  public  school  teachers 
to  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  their  classes  as  does 
the  director  to  the  members  of  his  club,  there  would 
be  no  need  of  boys'  clubs ;  could  the  churches  be  in- 
spired to  do  this  kind  of  work,  and  do  it  with  the 
breadth  with  which  it  is  done  in  the  boys'  club,  the 
boys'  club  would  have  no  existence.  It  is,  therefore, 
in  my  mind,  an  important,  but  not  the  only  means  of 
reaching  the  boy,  and  it,  as  well  as  other  possible 
means,  should  be  pushed  to  the  utmost  in  every  city 
and  town  in  the  country." 

Without  going  into  the  matter  of  the  tendencies  of 
other  organizations  as  to  the  home,  there  are  already 
manifest  in  the  boys'  club  movement  some  signs  that 
are  encouraging  in  this  regard.  The  activities  of  the 
club  themselves  react  upon  the  home.       Boys  bring 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     65 

home  artistic  handiwork  to  adorn  the  home,  and  pa- 
pers and  books  to  be  read  at  home;  boys  leiarn  to 
cook,  to  repair  and  make  furniture  and  to  cobble 
shoes,  and  apply  this  knowledge  at  home;  boys  are 
given  unfinished  work  to  take  home  and  finish.  Both 
the  settlements  and  the  mass  clubs  find  that  they  be- 
gin with  the  boy  but  cannot  finish  their  work  until  I 
they  touch  the  rest  of  the  family.  At  Lincoln  House* 
the  elaborate  system  of  scores  of  clubs — of  children, 
boys,  girls,  young  men,  young  women,  fathers,  moth- 
ers, reaching  1,200  people — actually  grew  out  of  one 
club  for  boys.  This  is  the  natural  tendency  every- 
where. The  result  of  these  indications  is  to  draw  out 
from  their  homes  for  one  or  more  times  a  week  the 
children  and  then  the  parents,  to  inspire  and  teach 
them  and  give  them  new  resources,  trusting  that  they 
will  return  and  apply  these  acquisitions  in  home  life. 
A  more  normal  way  of  helping  the  home  would  seem 
to  be  that  of  the  Home  Library  System.  The  aim 
here  is  the  opposite  one,  of  going  into  the  home 
and  stimulating  its  better  elements.  The  plan  is  this. 
A  book-shelf  of  books  is  loaned  to  a  poor  home  and 
a  volunteer  visitor  comes  in,  not  to  talk  religion  or 
morals  or  give  charity,  but  to  gather  a  group  of  eight 
or  ten  children  and  read  to  them.  Games  and  pic- 
tures are  circulated  in  the  same  way  and  the  pass- 
books of  the  Stamp  Saving  Society  are  distributed 
and  collected.  The  ways  in  which  this  plan  refines, 
educates,  encourages  cleanliness,  morality,  frugality, 
sobriety,  pride  in  the  home  and  the  genuine  spirit  of 


66  The  Boy  Problem 

friendship,    and    satisfies    the    play-instinct    and    the 
social   nature   may   be   rdadily   imagined.    The   only 
trouble  with  this  splendid  idea  is  that  it  is  millennial. 
The  poor  want  the  excitement  of  the  street  and  of  the 
crowd,  and  the  good  people  who  might  come  to  help 
'  want  to  do  something  that  is  connected  with  an  an- 
nual report,  an  institution  and  the  fellowship  of  other 
refined  folk,  who  are  also  workers.    Yet  this  sort  of 
thing  is  something  that  anybody  can  start  right  off 
and  do,  and  without  waiting  for  anybody  else  to  be- 
gin or  to  organize.       At  the  South  End  House  in 
Boston  the  Home  Library  plan  is  being  used  as  a 
corrective  to  the  anti-domestic   and  the    institution- 
alizing tendencies.       The  scheme  is  to  plant  these 
home  libraries  as  outposts  through  different  parts  of 
the  neighborhood  rather  than  to  group  all  the  clubs 
in  one  large  building.       I  think  it  may  be  desirable 
and  possible  to  satisfy  both  this  love  for  the  larger 
social  atmosphere  and  that  for  the   domestic  circle 
among   the    same   people   by   coordinating   the   two 
methods. 
)^     Another  agency  for  helping  the  city  boy  in  which 
the  reHgious  element  is  present  is  that  of  the  Boys' 
Branch  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association. 
The  boys'  department  was  an  afterthought;  in  few  of 
Ihe   association    buildings   was     adequate    provision 
made  for  it,  and  the  number  of  flourishing  branches  is 
not  yet  very  large.     But  the  officers  of  the  interna- 
tional movement  are  awakening  to  its    importance 
and,  with  the  present    emphasis  upon  the    religious 


Organisations  Formed   for  Boys  by  Adults     6y 

crisis  of  adolescence,  it  seems  likely  that  this  will  in 
time  become  the  most  important  thing  in  Association 
work.  The  Associations  have  an  almost  ideal  equip- 
ment for  boys'  work,  but  the  fact  that  it  is  monopo- 
lized by  the  men  at  the  time  when  the  street  boys  can 
use  it  has  emphasized  the  tendency,  which  the  pro- 
hibitive fees  and  the  general  trend  of  the  Association 
work  have  made,  to  adapt  the  work  to  schoolboys  of 
the  upper  and  middle  classes  of  society.  There  is 
certainly  need  enough  in  our  large  cities  of  an  institu- 
tion especially  for  these  boys,  who'  are  as  much  in  dan- 
ger physically  and  morally  as  those  who  are  poorer. 
A  plan  which  has  been  adopted  lately  with  excellent 
wisdom  is,  when  an  old  building  is  abandoned  for  a 
better  one,  not  to  sell  it,  but  to  give  it  entirely  to  the 
boys'  department.  This  has  suggested  the  possibiHty 
that  the  boys'  departments  which  haVe  this  special 
ccjuipment  may  enter  into  work  for  street  boys  upon 
broader  lines  than  heretofore.  The  admirable  inter- 
national organization,  with  its  centralized  office  and 
close  oversight  of  its  branches,  would  certainly  give 
an  executive  and  economical  direction,  which  the 
street  boys'  clubs  in  their  scattered  efforts  have  sorely 
lacked.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how 
the  Association,  confined  in  its  support  and  ideals  to 
Protestant  people  of  the  evangelical  type,  could  work 
in  Hebrew,  Irish  or  French  neighborhoods  success- 
fully unless  it  curtailed  its  distinctively  religious 
•methods. 

The  Association,  although  Its  boys'  work  is  so  new, 


68  The  Boy  Problem 

has  already  gone  into  the  following  many  and  sug- 
gestive departments  of  work  for  boys,  enumerated  by 
Mr.  E.  M.  Robinson,  the  International  Boys'  Work 
Secretary  of  the  movement:  "The  gymnasium,  with 
its  swimming-tank  and  bathing  facilities;  the  bowling- 
alleys,  the  basket-ball  leagues  and  baseball  clubs, 
foot-ball  games^the  cross-country  running,  the  out- 
ings, bicycle  clubs,  rough  riders,  hiking  clubs,  canoe 
and  boat  clubs,  the  boys'  summer  camps,  with  their 
multitudinous  activities;  hospital  corps,  drum  corps, 
the  small  clubs  in  the  building,  camera  clubs,  stamp 
clubs,  coin  clubs,  magic  clubs,  natural  history  clubs, 
educational  clubs,  observation  parties,  popular  talks,  il- 
lustrated lectures,  library,  reading-rooms,  games,  de- 
bates, literary  societies,  the  educational  and  industrial 
classes,  sloyd,  carpentry,  printing,  electricity,  scroll- 
sawing,  basket-making,  etching,  sketching,  poster- 
painting,  music,  commercial  branches  and  English, 
the  committee  service  of  boys  and  conferences  and 
conventions  of  boys,  the  gospel  meetings,  prayer- 
meetings,  Bible  classes  of  various  kinds,  with  black- 
board, water-colors,  paper-pulp  maps,  and  models; 
stereopticon  and  illustrated  lessons,  chalk  talks, 
chemical  talks,  Yoke  Fellows*  Bands,  missionary 
classes,  junior  volunteer  leagues,  personal  workers' 
bands,  etc."  Of  all  these  the  most  important  con- 
tribution is  the  boys'  camp.  To  this  means  of  return 
to  the  natural  country  of  boyhood,  the  free  life  of  out- 
of-doors,  the  Association  has  applied  itself  with  lar^e 
wisdom  and  patience.     The  interesting  light  which 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     69 
i» 

these  camps  throw  upon  boy  nature,  and  boys'  needs, 
the  susceptibility  to  healthy  moral  and  religious  im- 
pressions at  these  places  and  the  fruitful  results,  I 
shall  speak  of  in  another  chapter. 

The  boys'  department  of  the  Association  is  con- 
ferring many  benefits  upon  the  churches.     It  does  a 
valuable  social  work  in  bringing  together  boys  from 
different  denominations.    In  many  great  cities  it  deals 
with  as  many  boys  who  are  outside  as  are   inside 
churches.    In  other  places  the  preponderance  of  girls 
in  the  young  people's  societies  and  the  lack  of  Sun- 
day-school lessons  and  methods  adaptable  to  boys  has 
laid  upon  it  a  great  opportunity  and  burden.    The  As- 
sociation is  teaching  the  churches  riiany  Tessons  as.to 
the  ways  to  approach  boys,  the  desirability  of  organ- 
izing them  apart  from  girls  and  of  recognizing  the   . 
various  ages,  and  the  way  to  teach  them  the  Bible  and  [ 
religion.     In  its  triangle  representing  "Spirit,  Mind  ' 
and  Body"  its  aim  is  all-round  development  of  the 
entire  nature.    Too  often  the  Church  has  thought  of  | 
the  boy  as  all  spirit.    In  some  small  cities  I  have  felt  j 
that  the  superior  success  of  the  Association  has  cre-^ 
ated  a  clashing  with  the  churches.     Must  the  Asso- 
ciation always  insist  on  having  all  parts  of  the  tri- 
angle represented  in  its  own  walls?    Might  it  not  be 
better  sometimes  if  the  y\ssociation  in  its  boys'  work 
should  be  largely  the  convenient  federation  of  athletic 
and  supplementary  agencies  which  no  single  church 
can  adequately  support,  while  its  secretary  cooperates 
in  helping  the  development  of  means  of  spiritual  nur- 


yo  The  Boy  Problem 

ture  for  boys  in  the  churches  tliemselves?  I  am  per- 
suaded that  in  many  a  community  the  pastors,  though 
unable  to  provide  institutional  features  for  their  boys, 
have  very  carefully  planned  spiritual  instrumentali- 
ties, with  which  boys'  meetings,  Bible  classes  and 
committees  at  the  Association  are  a  well  meant  but 
unjustifiable  interference.  Let  the  Secretary  quietly 
yield  to  every  effort  for  nurture  in  the  local  church. 
Instead  of  conducting  boys'  Bible  classes,  let  the 
secretary,  for  example,  be  the  teacher  of  the  teachers 
of  boys'  classes  in  the  separate  Sunday-schools. 

The  boys'  department  has  continually  to  fight 
against  a  foe  which  is  already  the  too-successful  enemy 
of  the  men's  department,  namely,  the  idea  that  one 
goes  to  the  Association  to  get  something,  that  the 
fee  of  $3,  $5  or  $8  represents  an  outlay  which  on? 
must  scrupulously  insist  on  getting  back  in  the  form 
of  physical  benefits  or  even  of  spiritual  blessings.  It 
is  against  this  tendency,  which  associates  itself  so 
readily  with  the  subjective  type  of  religion  which  the 
Association  used  to  foster,  that  Dr.  Luther  Gulick 
has  waged  such  a  determined  warfare.  It  is  the  re- 
mainder of  that  selfishness  in  religion  that  makes 
many  a  Christian  parent  feel  that  he  can  trust  better 
the  approach,  the  subsequent  care  and  the  product 
of  religious  experience  in  his  boy  in  the  Church  than 
in  the  Association.  The  improvement  of  the  quality 
of  men  who  take  up  the  secretaryship  of  the  boys' 
department  will  be  the  way  to  overcome  this  ten- 
dency.    The  idea  that  a   more  sentimental,  a  little 


Organizations  Fonned  for  Boys  by  Adults     yi 

weaker-minded  and  a  somewhat  nondescript  type  of 
man  will  do  in  the  boys'  work,  and  that  a  junior  sec- 
retaryship is  only  a  stepping-stone  to  something 
higher  is  giving  place  to  the  recognition  that  this 
work  demands  the  life-consecration  of  men  of  the 
same  ability  and  training  as  the  public  school  masters 
of  boys  of  this  same  age.  The  practical  way  for  this 
reform  to  be  brought  about  will  be  for  the  communi- 
ties which  support  the  Association  to  give  the  boys' 
director  a  somewhat  better  salary  than  that  of  an  as- 
sistant janitor  or  a  shipping-clerk.  One  of  the  finest 
forces  to  counteract  this  tendency  in  the  individual  is 
the  recent  effort  to  secure  evangelizing  of  boys  by 
their  own  Christian  fellows.  As  on  the  foreign  field 
it  is  the  native  worker  who  is  most  efficient,  so  a  boy 
of  one's  own  age  is  to  another  boy  the  ''native  work- 
er" most  adapted  to  lead  him  to  Christ.  The  influ- 
ence of  such  altruism,  if  sincere  and  unaffected,  upon 
the  young  Christian  himself  is  most  enlarging  to  thC: 

soul.  ■      !'i  ^      I      i'     '.^^^ll^ljlii 

The  thought  that  the  boys'  department  exists  not 
for  itself  but  for  the  community  and  for  the  churches 
IS  coming  into  slow  recognition.  A  few  Associations 
have  already  begun  to  plant  their  outposts  away  from 
their  fortresses,  their  own  buildings.  The  first  line  of 
offense  is  apt  to  be  the  boat-house  or  the  camp.  In 
Haverhill,  Mass.,  there  are  three  boys'  departments 
and  soon  there  are  to  be  five,  only  one  of  which  is  lo- 
cated in  the  Association  building,  the  rest  being  in 
churches  in  different  districts  of  the  city.     In  Cleve- 


"^2  The  Boy  Problem 

land  a  branch  is  known  as  the  West  Side  Boys'  Club, 
in  Halifax,  N.  S.,  it  is  the  Other  Fellows'  Club.  In 
some  small  places  the  secretary  gets  hold  of  a  *'gang" 
before  it  becomes  dangerous  and  persuades  it  to  be- 
come affiliated  with  the  Association,  either  as  a  spe- 
cial club  in  the  main  building  or  as  an  outpost  branch. 
The  Boys'  Brotherhood  of  Philadelphia  grew  out  of 
the  Association.  This  taking  advantage  of  the  neigh- 
borhood and  "gang"  spirit  is  an  intelligent  recogni- 
tion of  social  conditions  and  makes  it  possible  for  the 
Association  to  do  a  much  more  elastic  and  compre- 
hensive work.  Many  Associations  are  dividing  their 
membership  privileges  into  those  for  street  boys, 
employed  boys  and  school  boys.  No  doubt  it  is 
done  for  convenience  only,  and  the  division  lines  are 
natural,  but  Mr.  Lincoln  Brown  criticises  the  ten- 
dency as  indicating  "a  petty  system  of  caste  growing 
up  between  the  upper  and  lower  middle  class  youth  in 
our  land  .  .  .  between  the  sons  of  shopkeepers  and 
those  of  the  respectable  day  laborer."  ^ 

We  have  been  speaking  thus  far  of  instrumentali- 
ties suited  to  large  and  crowded  populations.  But  it 
is  coming  to  be  recognized  that  the  small  cities  and  I 
the  large  towns  also  have  their  boy  problem.  There 
life  is  a  smaller  pool  that  stirs  ceaselessly  about  itself 
and  much  of  the  sin  which  in  the  great  city  flows  past 
the  child  on  the  wider  current  of  many  interests  sticks, 
because  of  the  influence  of  some  strong  evil  person- 
ality or  by  reason  of  the  greater  relative  importance 
and   strength   of  village    "gangs,"   which    are    unre- 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        73 

strained  by  uniformed  police  and  city  walls.  The 
nearness  ot  the  country  is  both  the  clanger  and  the 
salvation  of  these  boys,  for  the  boys  who  live!  nearer 
to  nature  are  more  full  of  will  ana  mdependence 
either  for  good  or  tor  evil,  while  m  country  conditions 
themselves  may  be  found  the  antidotes  to  the  ills  of 
boy-life. 

In  the  small  towns  and  in  larger  places  where  i 
Protestant  churches  predominate  I  am  persuaded  that  I 
this  work  may  best  be  done  by  the  churches,  either  | 
formally  or  by  substantial  cooperation.  They  have  / 
the  workers  and  the  facilities.  If  it  be  true,  as  I  think 
it  is,  that  the  places  in  America  in  which  it  is  most 
desirable  to  live  are  the  large  towns  and  small  cities, 
one  great  reason  why  this  is  so  is  because  it  is  pos- 
sible in  such  places  to  coordinate  the  religious,  intel- 
lectual, social  and  physical  life  of  the  community,  not 
for  boys  only  but  for  all,  that  there  shall  be  no  bar- 
riers between  them,  but  that  all  shall  be  for  the  har- 
mony of  well-rounded  human  development.  Con- 
trary to  the  usual  impression,  I  believe  that  the  sum- 
mer as  much  as  the  winter  is  in  such  places  a  favor- 
able time  for  work  with  boys.  The  country  out-of- 
doors  itself  is  the  best  laboratory,  the  best  club-house 
for  boys.  Here  they  are  at  home  and  so  are  known 
and  dealt  with  at  their  best  and  most  naturally.  It 
used  to  be  thought  that  boys  could  safdy  be  left  to 
themselves  during  the  summer  vacation,  but  it  is 
coming  to  be  realized  that  this  is  the  time  when  the 
gang-spirit  often  becomes  most  obnoxious  and  that, 


74  The   Boy  Problem 

while  no  doubt  the  child  absorbs  much  knowledge 
and  power  from  Mother  Natiire,  yet  there  are  great 
possibilities  in  directing  and  interpreting  this  outdoor 
education. 

An  experiment  which  makes  this  emphasis  upon 
summer  activities  and  yet  which  carries  the  boys 
through  the  year  in  a  large  country  town  is  that  of 
the  Andover  Play  School,  devised  and  superintended 
by  George  E.  Johnson,  late  Superintendent  of  Public 
Schools  in  Andover,  Mass.  Mr.  Johnson,  who  adds 
to  the  qualifications  of  being  an  expert  athlete  and  an 
authority  upon  the  place  of  play  in  education  those 
rare  traits,  which  win  confidence,  of  patience,  thor- 
oughness and  perseverance  in  observation  and  effort, 
has  brought  into  being  a  social  institution  of  great 
value  and  suggestiveness.  It  is  based  upon  the  play- 
instinct,  with  all  the  other  allied  instincts  of  which 
play  is  an  expression.  Its  purpose  is  to  utilize  those 
neglected  instincts  in  education,  and  much  is  made 
of  will-training  by  self-origination  and  execution  of 
handiwork.  Mr.  Johnson  describes  the  plan  as  fol- 
lows in  the  Pedagogical  Seminary: 

"It  is  a  school  for  boys  ranging  from  ten  to  four- 
teen years  of  age.  Its  sessions  have  been  evening! 
sessions  in  the  \\'inter  and  day  sessions  during  the 
summer  vacation.  The  work  of  the  school  has  been 
based  entirely  upon  the  play  interests  of  the  boys  at- 
tending. The  work  has  varied  somewhat  according 
to  the  season  of  the  year,  but  the  description  will  con- 
cern mainly  the  work  of  the  summer  sessions. 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        75 

'The  school  was  in  session  for  six  weeks  during 
July  and  August,  the  school  day  was  from  half  past 
eight  to  twelve,  and  forty  boys  were  regularly  in  at- 
tendance. There  were  three  periods  in  the  school 
day,  the  first  and  third  being  one  hour  and  a  half  in 
length  and  the  second  one  hour.  A  free  choice  of 
occupation  was  granted  at  the  beginning  of  the  term, 
very  little  occasion  for  change  in  the  divisions  oc- 
curring thereafter. 

"Perhaps  the  favorite  occupation,  on  the  whole, 
was  the  wood-work.  There  was  a  complete  sloyd  out- 
fit and  a  trained  sloyd  teacher.  No  attempt  was  made 
to  hold  the  boys  to  a  formulated  course.  The  wood- 
work was  to  serve  as  a  sort  of  supply  shop  for  the 
apparatus  used  in  the  school.  The  boys  made  their 
own  butterfly  nets  and  fish  nets  for  the  nature  work. 
They  made  the  mounting  boards  used  in  mounting 
the  specimens,  the  cases  for  the  permanent  collec- 
tions, developing  cages  for  the  caterpillars,  aquaria 
for  the  fishes,  box  traps  for  catching  squirrels,  etc. 
If  a  boy  was  interested  in  archery,  he  made  his  bow 
and  arrows ;  if  in  cricket,  a  bat ;  if  in  kite-flying,  a 
kite ;  if  in  making  a  present  for  a  younger  brother  or 
sister,  a  toy  table,  perhaps.  Mothers,  too,  reaped  the 
benefits  of  the  shop;  for  a  boy  often  turned  from  his 
toy-making  to  the  making  of  a  sleeve-board,  ironing 
board,  bread  board,  shelf,  or  something  else  for  the 
house.  Sometimes  the  boys  united  in  making  some 
giant  afifair  of  common  interest;  as,  for  example,  a 
great  windmill  which  supplied  power  for  turning  the 


76  The   Boy   Problem 

grindstone,  or  a  dam  and  sluiceway  for  the  water- 
wheel,  or  a  catamaran  for  the  swimming-pond.  One 
summer  the  boys  built  a  log  cabin. 

"The  nature  work  was  hardly  less  popular  than  the 
toy-making.  Nearly  every  morning  there  might  have 
been  seen  a  company  of  ten  or  a  dozen  boys  starting 
out  with  the  leader  in  search  of  butterflies  or  fishes, 
and  for  the  incidental  study  of  birds,  or  frogs,  or 
snakes,  or  whatever  came  to  their  notice  while  hunt- 
ing. The  older  boys  devoted  themselvtes  mainly  to 
the  butterflies,  the  younger  to  the  fishes.  Nearly 
every  species  of  butterfly  to  be  found  in  Andover  dur- 
ing the  season  was  captured,  many  kinds  of  caterpil- 
lars taken  and  developed  into  chrysalides  in  the 
cages,  and  nearly  all  the  different  kinds  of  fishes  to  be 
found  in  the  streams  and  ponds  of  Andover  were 
caught  and  studied.  The  work  consisted  largely  of 
outdoor  tramps,  but  there  was  also  laboratory  work, 
the  description  and  drawing  of  the  worm,  chrysalis 
and  butterfly.  Honey  bees  in  an  observation  hive 
and  ants  in  nests  made  of  school  slates  covered  with 
glass  were  watched.  Some  of  the  ants'  nests  were 
successfully  kept  and  watched  for  months,  one  boy 
keeping  a  colony  all  winter.  Tlie  microscope  was 
frequently  used  in  the  laboratory  work.  Note-books 
on  fishes  were  also  kept.  The  interest  of  the  boys 
was  deepest  in  the  gathering  and  general  observation 
and  naming  of  specimens,  the  watching  and  feeding 
of  the  fishes,  and  less  in  the  minuter  observation, 
drawing  and  naming  the  parts.  The  zeal  in  the  hunt- 
ing of  specimens  was  often  intense. 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        yy 

"Allied  to  the  nature  work  was  the  gardening.  A 
part  of  the  school-yard  was  plowed  and  a  definite  por- 
ton  allotted  to  each  boy  who  chose  gardening.  Vege- 
tables of  various  kinds  were  planted.  Flower  plants 
were  also  a  part  of  the  care  and  possession  of  the 
boys,  and  were  taken  home  and  transplanted  by  the 
boys  at  the  close  of  the  school.  The  following  spring, 
many  of  these  boys  were  reported  to  me  as  having 
started  gardens  of  their  own  at  home. 

"In  the  winter  session  stamp  and  picture  collections 
.  were  substituted  for  the  nature  collections,  the  stamp- 
collecting  craze  spreading  like  wild-fire  among  the 
school  children  last  winter,  some  of  the  candy  and 
cigarette  counters  suflfering  thereby,  to  my  certain 
knowledge. 

"The  second  period  of  the  day,  one  hour  in  length, 
was  spent  in  outdoor  play.  In  one  section  of  the 
playground  might  havfe  been  seen  a  group  of  boys 
engaged  in  a  match  at  archery.  In  another  section, 
the  older  boys,  perhaps,  divided  into  opposing  sides 
by  some  natural  grouping  which  lent  zest  to  emula- 
tion, were  hard  at  a  spirited  game  of  ball.  Elsewhere 
some  of  the  younger  or  less  athletic  boys  were  play- 
ing at  tenpins  on  the  smooth  driveway,  or  at  bean 
bags.  There  were  also,  at  times,  football,  basket-ball, 
ring-toss,  tag  games,  boxing,  wrestling,  racing,  jump- 
ing, vaulting,  gymnastic  tricks,  kite-flying,  boat  rac- 
ing at  Rabbitt's  Pond,  swimming  races  at  Pomp's  or 
in  the  Shaiwsheen.  Three  times  a  week  there  was  a 
division  in  swimming.     The  swimming  lessons  often 


78  The   Boy   Problem 

served  as  a  good  opportunity  for  collecting  speci- 
mens or  plants  for  the  aquaria.  On  rainy  days  there 
were  indoor  games,  which  partook  more  of  the  nature 
of  social  or  parlor  games  and  which  were  intellectual 
rather  than  physical. 

"The  musically  incHned  boys  were  always  eager  for 
an  orchestra.  This  took  the  form  of  the  kindersym- 
phonie.  The  talents  and  attainments  of  the  boys 
made  the  music  necessarily  crude,  but  it  was  much 
enjoyed  by  them.  The  vioHnists  were  children  who 
came  for  the  orchestra  alone,  the  play-school  boys 
being  confined  mainly  to  time-beating  instruments. 
There  was  a  class  also  in  piano-playing  which  met 
twice  a  week. 

"The  printing  department  appealed  to  some  as  real 
play.    The  press  served  in  printing  the  names  of  the 
boys  in  the  several  departments,  the  baseball  teams, 
headings  for  school  exercise  papers,  cards,  some  bill- 
heads, and,  best  of  all,  a  four-paged  paper  issued  at 
the  close  of  the  last  school,  containing  compositions 
of  the  boys  on  the  work  of  the  various  departments, 
names  of  prize-takers,  cuts  of  drawings  made  in  the 
nature  work,  list  of  specimens  captured,  and  the  like. 
"Besides  the  drawing  in  the  nature  work,  there  was 
a  division  in  drawing  for  those  who  preferred  it  to 
any  other  occupation  they  might  have  during  that 
period.    The  work  took  the  form,  mainly,  of  large  free 
drawings  from  objects.     This  was  the  nearest  allied 
to  regular  school  work  of  any  department,  unless  we 
except  the  library  from  which  the  boys  eagerly  drew 
books  of  stories,  history  or  nature,  for  home  reading." 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        79 

The  essential  things  about  this  remarkable  lillipu- 
tian  community  seem  to  be  the  intelHgent  contact 
with  nature,  the  devising  and  making  by  the  boys  of 
their  instruments  of  play  and  work — but  nothing  like 
formal  sloyd  or  classroom  drill — and  the  natural  and 
friendly  social  relations  with  the  boys  of  the  adult 
workers,  some  of  whom  were  paid  and  some  volun- 
teer. 

Mr.  Johnson  has  planned  a  Play-School  curricu- 
lum to  run  from  boyhood  to  manhood,  of  which  he 
has  furnished  me  the  following  outline.  Not  all  of  it 
has  yet  been  carried  out,  but  the  syllabus  shows  its 
natural  gradations,  and  indicates  how  the  churches 
can  so  fit  themselves  in  with  the  scheme,  by  furnish- 
ing workers,  committees  and  supplemental  instruc- 
tion, that  the  plan  shall  become  a  complete  institute 
of  social  pedagogy: 

''General     Outline     of     Work.     Andover    Play-School 
and  Boys'  Club 

"Group  I.    Boys  ten  to  fourteen  years  old. 

"Play-School,  winter  session:  Wood-work,  gymna- 
sium, games,  collections,  music,  printing,  library,  sav- 
ings bank. 

"Spring:  Garden  class  started,  nature  work  inci- 
dentally.   Outdoor  games  'patroned'  Saturdays. 

"Summer:  Vacation  Play-School. 

"Group  TI.     Boys  fourteen  to  eighteen  years  old. 

"Winter:  Sloyd,  mechanical  drawing,  gymnasium, 
athletic  club,  games  with  coaching,  checkers,  chess, 
v/hist,  billiards,  music,  banjo  club,  collections,  print- 


8o  The   Boy  Problem 

ing,  paper  issued,  savings  bank,  instruction  in  various 
branches,  library  (reading  watched,  hints  given,  use 
cf  library). 

"Spring,  summer  and  fall:  Outdoor  gymnasium, 
patronage  of  athletic  teams,  game-master  for  the 
Fiichardson  Field. 

"Group  III.    Age  eighteen  to  twenty-two. 

"Winter:  School  of  politics,  gymnasium,  athletic 
club,  games  with  tournament  and  coaching,  music, 
dramatics,  printing,  etc.,  continued,  instructions  in 
various  branches,  library  continued,  savings  bank 
(Andover  Bank). 

"Spring,  summer  and  fall:  Outdoor  gymnasium, 
patronage  of  athletic  teams,  game-master,  etc. 

"Miscellaneous:  Church  committees  to  keep  track 
of  various  ages.  Lectures  for  information,  morals, 
citizenship,  health,  purity.    Socials." 

Mr.  Johnson's  modest  but  thorough  work  with 
boys  is  a  silent  indictment  against  those  who  think 
that  they  are  doing  their  duty  by  the  boys  if  they 
open  a  village  gymnasium  or  reading-room  or  start  a 
boys*  brigade  or  boys'  appendix  to  the  local  Y.  M.  C. 
A.,  and  thus  give  their  boys  wholesale  to  the  care  of 
one  man  or  a  part  of  one  man  for  a  few  weeks  in  the 
winter. 

By  beginning  in  a  small  and  natural  way,  with  a 
leader  who  has  mastered  the  idea  and  who  is  a  person 
of  efficiency  and  a  few  volunteer  workers  who  know 
something  about  tools,  insects,  plants  or  sports,  and 
a  group  of  boys,  and  a  very  little  apparatus,  this  sort 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        8i 

of  work  ought  in  any  place  to  grow  to  something  very 
servicdable  and  fruitful,  without  any  of  the  barren- 
ness, extravagance  and  public  indifference  which  usu- 
ally seem  to  be  connected  with  an  institution.  I  have 
been  called  in  counsel  with  the  people  in  some  large 
towns  who,  after  talking  over  various  agencies  which 
would  call  in  an  outsider  as  director,  made  up  their 
minds  that  there  were  enough  people  of  ability  and 
sense  and  enough  native  beneficent  agencies  at  home 
to  do  the  work  themselves.  I  look  forward  to  the 
day  when  every  such  town  shall  have  a  charmful  but 
benevolent  Pied  Piper  with  his  assistants  around 
whom  the  social  interests  of  all  the  boys  in  the  place 
shall  center. 

The  Rev.  Edward  P.  Pressey  is  conducting  at  Mon- 
tague, Mass.,  a  sort  of  handicraft  social  settlement, 
aiming  to  secure  a  more  attractive  and  wholesome 
country  life  by  reviving  the  old  crafts  among  young 
people. 

At  the  Chautauqua  Boys'  Gub,  in  New  York,  the 
use  of  some  of  these  activities  suggests  the  possibility 
of  their  adaptation  to  boys'  camps  and  summer  assem- 
blies. 

In  the  Vacation  Schools  of  the  large  cities,  in  addi- 
tion to  regular  sloyd,  clay  modelling,  leather  work, 
sewing,  printing,  weaving,  etc.,  there  is  often  instruc- 
tion in  nature  study  by  flower-analysis,  water-color 
painting  and  observation  of  animals  in  cages.  At  one 
such  school  the  younger  children  gave  an  exhibition 
of  a  rural  scene,  representing  "a  country  house  with 


82  The   Boy   Problem 

barn,  horses,  cows,  lambs,  chickens,  pigs,  etc.,  a  well 
with  an  old-fashioned  bucket  in  the  foreground;  in 
the  background  ploughed  land  and  a  grain  field, 
fenced.  On  the  other  side  of  the  room  was  the  repre- 
.sentation  of  a  country  store  filled  with  all  sorts  of 
things  from  vegetables  to  saddlery,  etc.  The  idea 
was  to  represent  the  products  of  the  farm  and  the  fac- 
tory gathered  in  one  store,  thus  showing  graphically 
the  interdependence  of  city  and  coimtry,  of  manufac- 
turing and  agriculture,  and  the  dignity  of  all  labor." 
Here  is  a  certain  amount  of  the  self-origination  of 
Mr.  Johnson's  school,  and  a  rather  pitiful  attempt  to 
give  an  artificial  rural  atmosphere  in  a  city  brick 
schoolhouse.  The  summer  play-grounds  are  becom- 
ing municipal  institutions,  extensions  of  the  public 
school  system,  just  as  fast  as  they  are  recognized  as 
creators  of  health  and  morality.  Summer  philanthro- 
pies are  supplementing  the  vacation  schools  and  sum- 
mer playgrounds  by  giving  each  year  a  larger  num- 
ber of  city  children  the  air  and  tonic,  the  freedom  and 
nurture  and  healing  of  the  country. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  some  of  the  agencies,  found  in 
both  city  and  country,  in  which  the  religious  element 
is  central.  So  important  and  so  neglected  is  the  boy 
problem  in  the  church  that  I  shall  give  an  entire  chap- 
ter to  a  constructive  study  of  aims  and  methods. 
What  I  shall  do  here  is  simply  to  describe  some  of  the 
methods  now  in  existence. 

The  most  popular  way  of  helping  boys  in  the  church 
t  present  is  in  the  Junior  or  Intermediate  Endeavor 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        83 

Society  and  kindred  organizations.  The  Endeavor 
movement  soon  found  a  practical  difficulty  in  the  fact 
that  its  young  people,  some  of  whom  were  quite 
young  when  they  entered,  remained  in  the  society 
year  after  year,  and  that  just  as  soon  as  their  average 
age  began  to  increase  it  became  almost  impossible  to 
gather  in  younger  members.  To  meet  this  need,  in 
1884  Junior  societies  and  a  few  years  later  Interme- 
diate societies  began  to  be  established,  formed  in  com- 
plete imitation  of  the  societies  of  older  young  people. 
Thus  naturally,  and  yet  we  may  say  somewhat 
thoughtlessly,  an  institution  was  introduced  into  our 
churches  with  the  same  name  and  methods  as  one  al- 
ready existing,  but  with  no  query  as  to  whether  means 
that  were  adaptable  to  persons  from  16  to  60  would 
be  perfectly  natural  to  boys  and  girls  from  10  to  16. 

An  interesting  test  as  to  whether  these  Junior  soci- 
eties do  actually  suit  young  children  may  be  taken 
from  the  results  of  Dr.  Sheldon's  study,  already  re- 
ferred to,  of  the  societies,  clubs  and  gangs  which 
children  spontaneously  organize.  If  interest  is  the 
key  to  influence,  what  boys  Hke  to  do  is  a  criterion  as 
to  the  sort  of  things  which  it  is  wise  to  do  for  them. 
Three  things  were  definitely  discovered  regarding 
these  societies:  physical  activity,  in  the  forms  of  play, 
construction,  wandering  and  athletics,  was  the  su- 
preme interest,  85^  per  cent  of  the  societies  having 
this  as  its  characteristic;  leagues  for  religious  expres- 
sion were  almost  entirely  absent;  boys  and  girls  al- 
most never  organized  together. 


84  The  Boy  Problem 

We  see  at  once  that  these  Junior  societies  ignore 
these  three  facts,  for  they  are  mostly  organizations 
for  sitting  still,  they  aim  directly  at  religious  expres- 
sion, and  they  include  boys  and  girls  together. 

Religion  in  a  child  may  be  real,  but  it  is  only  a 
promised  It  is  not  yet  ^time  to  talk  about  it  or  dis- 
play it  in  any  vocal  way.  "Oh,  that  I  might  do  some- 
thing for  God!"  not,  "Oh,  to  say  something!"  is  his 
cry. 

With  boys  especially  this  is. a  time  of  reserves,  the 
distance  between  apprehension  and  expression  is  never 
so  long  as  now,  it  is  more  important  to  brood  than  to 
utter,  and  public  prayer  or  testimony  or  opinion  is,  in 
this  imitative  age,  sure  to  be  parrot-like  and  unnatural. 
It  is  a  period  when  a  boy  tries  to  be  honest  with 
himself.  The  insistence  upon  the  ironclad,  lifelong 
pledge  and  the  easy  tolerance  of  its  frequent  infrac- 
tion does  this  quality  of  his  nature  a  serious  wrong. 
"To  do  whatever  Jesus  would  have  us  do,"  says  Dr. 
O.  S.  Davis  in  a  kindly  critique,  "is  to  express  our 
religious  life  through  all  the  activities  of  our  being, 
and  it  is  made  the  first  element  in  the  Christian  En- 
deavor consecration.  But  the  boy  is  obliged  to  sub- 
sume under  this  head  all  the  positive,  manly,  heroic 
activities  of  his  practical  life.  These  are  the  implied 
duties  of  the  pledge.  Positive  courage  in  action, 
manly  chivalry  in  daily, life,  fidelity  in  school,  honesty 
in  the  beginnings  of  trade  and  handiwork,  high  ideals 
in  the  duties  of  citizenship, — these  are  the  implied  vir- 
tues of  the  Christian  Endeavor  pledge."     "Nothing 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults        85 

tends  more  to  give  to  children  a  sense  of  unreality," 
says  Sir  Joshua  Fitch,  "than  the  habit  of  exacting 
from  them  professions  of  faith  which  do  not  honestly 
correspond  to  their  present  stage  of  religious  experi- 
ence." When  a  boy  wants  to  talk  in  meeting  at  this 
age  there  is  generally  something  the  matter  with  him. 
I  have  often  observed  that  it  is  not  the  best  or  most 
thoughtful  boys  who  do  the  praying  and  talking  in 
these  meetings.  It  is  rather  those  of  quick  but  shal- 
low natures  who  ought  to  be  repressed  rather  than 
•encouraged,  and  who  are  learning  a  light  and  easy 
manner  of  rehgious  expression  which  may  later  easily 
become  weakly  fluent  and  more  or  less  consciously 
hypocritical.  A  bright  boy  who  was  asked  to  join  an 
Endeavor  Society  replied,  "No,  they  talk  too  much  j 
with  their  mouths."  On  the  other  hand  an  immature 
boy  of  a  deeper  nature  will  often  be  led  into  giving 
expressions  of  himself,  honest  at  the  time,  which  he 
later  recognizes  as  crude  and  overwrought,  the  result 
of  which  may  be  to  silence  his  lips  forever  or  to  per- 
suade him  that  he  has  lost,  in  losing  its  temporary 
fervor,  the  reality  of  his  religious  life.  This  may  help 
explain  why  it  is  that  the  Endeavor  movement,  origi- 
nated largely  to  feed  and  fructify  the  church  prayer- 
meeting,  has  been  such  a  disappointment  in  this  re- 
gard. He  must  be  blind  who  does  not  see  that  in 
New  England  at  least,  the  mid-week  meeting  is  ceas 
ing  to  be  a  place  for  the  giving-  of  personal  religious 
experience. 
Another  fact  which  I  have  already  mentioned  is 


86  The   Boy  Problem 

I  tliat  life  to  adolescents  comes  on  in  waves,  between 
\  which  are  rhythms  or  lulls.  1  hose  who  have  much  to 
do  with  boys  intimately  and  many  men  from  their 
memory  of  childhood  have  testified  that  conversion 
is  quite  apt  to  come  in  three  successive  waves  of  in- 
creasing power  about  two  or  three  years  apart.  Be- 
tween these  waves  there  is  a  period  of  depression, 
caused  perhaps  by  puberal  or  other  physical  changes. 
This  is  "the  pin-feather  age,"  the  blunder  period.  In 
these  lulls  the  child  is  apt  to  think  he  has  lost  his  faith 
or  sinned  away  his  day  of  grace.  The  Junior  methods 
are  very  apt  to  intensify  the  morbidness  and  intro- 
spection of  these  curious  intermediary  periods. 

It  seems  to  me  that  Dr.  Coe  has  in  his  study  of 
Temperaments  cut  the  ground  away  forever  from  un- 
der that  hoary  heresy  that  "the  prayer-meeting  is  the 
thermometer  of  the  church."  The  exact  truth  is  that 
it  is  the  thermometer  of  the  people  of  sanguine  or 
melancholic  temperaments  in  the  church.  Sainthood, 
as  he  points  out,  has  in  all  ages,  especially  the  me- 
dieval, been  granted  to  those  of  devout  feeling  and 
devout  expression,  and  it  has  only  been  seldom  that 
men  have  "perceived  that  merely  filling  one's  station 
in  life  in  the  fear  of  God  is  a  spiritual  exercise."  The 
saints  of  the  Endeavor  movement — and  they  are  real 
saints — are  men  of  the  devotional  type.  They  pub- 
lish or  push  the  writings  of  Meyer,  Murray,  Morgan, 
Moody  and  McGregor,  who  are  also  saints  and  of  the 
same  type;  they  encourage  a  Comradeship  of  the 
Quiet  Hour,  which  appeals  to  saints — of  the  same 


A 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      87 

type;  and  they  believe  that  the  prayer-meeting  is  the 
thermometer  of  the  Christian.  But  there  are  other 
good  people  who  think  the  writings  of  those  saints 
who  begin  with  M  tiresome,  who  if  they  had  a  quiet 
h40ur  would  say  their  prayers  all  through  and  then 

'  have  fifty-seven  minutes  in  which  to  start  up  and  do 
something  useful,  and  to  whom  either  a  prayer-meet- 
ing is  irksome  or  personal  participation  in  it  painful 

^nd  unprofitable.    They  were  m^de  that  way.     They 
r^/^are  of  the  choleric  type. 

It  is  no  reflection  upon  the  manliness  of  the  former 
class  when  Professor  Coe  points  out  that  women  are 
overwhelmingly  of  sanguine  or  melancholic  tempera- 
ment, and  that  it  is  something  more  than  mere  coin- 
cidence that  women  should  be  in  the  majority  in  the 
churches  where  "the  forms  of  religious  life  natural  to 
the  choleric  temperament  are  habitually  discounted  in 
favor  of  those  natural  to  the  sanguine  and  melan- 
cholic temperaments." 

Whether  this  tendency  has  begun  to  show  its  re- 
sults in  the  Endeavor  movement  there  is  time,  but 
perhaps  there  are  not  sufficient  data,  to  make  evident. 
It  is  a  fact  that  in  the  states  and  the  denomination  in 
those  states  in  which  the  movement  started  the  socie- 
ties have  lately  fallen  oflf  very  largely  in  membership. 
A  statistician  in  whose  trustworthiness  with  the  use  of 
figures  I  have  unusual  confidence,  made  a  careful 
study  which  proved  to  him  that,  while  the  offices  in  a 
large  group  of  Endeavor  societies  several  years  ago 
were  mostly  held  by  young  men,  another  recent  can- 


88  The  Boy   Problem 

vass  showed  that  to  a  startHng  degree  they  were  now 
held  by  young  women.  Testimony  comes  to  me 
from  many  sources  that  the  proportion  of  young  men 
in  these  societies  is  falHng,  and  that  it  is  increasingly 
difficult  to  hold  young  men  of  the  active  type  in  their 
membership.  The  application  of  all  this  to  boys  is 
just  here.  While  Lotze  may  be  right  in  his  generali- 
zation, which  I  mentioned,  that  the  sanguine  is  the 
temperament  of  childhood,  the  melancholic  of  adoles- 
cence, the  choleric  of  maturity  and  the  phlegmatic  of 
age,  yet  that  is  only  saying  that  with  most  boys  the 
melancholic  is  the  passing  stage  on  the  way  to  matu- 
rity, and  that  when  we  emphasize  the  prayer-rneeting 
and  the  prayer-meeting  pledge  we  are  laying  stress 
upon  an  influence  which  many  boys  will  soon  out- 
grow. It  is  not  denied  that  susceptible  boys,  under 
the  influence  of  friendship  for  a  good  leader,  will  take 
such  a  pledge  and  keep  it.  All  this  argument  is  sim- 
ply to  prove  that  it  is  not  a  good  thing  to  do,  in  view 
of  its  later  consequences.  Indeed,  when  we  think  how 
little  training  or  result  is  actually  obtained  in  the 
average  society  by  the  sort  of  vocal  expression  which 
is  offered,  it  hardly  seems  worth  the  while.  A  boy 
may  learn  to  sing  heartily  Mr.  Wells'  metrical  para- 
phrase of  the  pledge : 

"When  our  Juniors  meet  we  will  try  to  be  there ; 
We'll  say  a  few  words,  or  we'll  pray  a  short  prayer," 

ibut  a  boy  is  not  to  think  that  because  a  time  comes 
when  he  cannot  do  this  freely  he  is  necessarily  any 
worse  a  boy — and  the  boys  ought  to  know  this.     For 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adulis      89 

the  sake  of  that  large  number  of  boys  whom  the 
prayer-meeting  pledge  will  sooner  or  later  alienate,  if 
not  because  it  is  such  a  frequent  occasion  of  perjury 
to  others,  I  would  put  participation  in  the  devotional 
meeting  on  the  basis  of  an  elective. 

The  psychologist  finds  fault  with  the  plan  because 
it  is  not  adapted  to  boys.  It  often  meets  Sundays  and 
so  reaches  only  the  boy  that  wears  the  Sunday  suit. 
It  is  an  altogether  different  boy  who  goes  out  into  life 
Monday.  It  ignores  almost  entirely  the  instincts  for 
physical  activity,  out-of-doors,  natural  science,  con- 
structiveness,  play.  This  fault  is  not  inherent,  and 
many  progressive  leaders  are  making  the  activities 
much  more  free  and  varied. 

The  chief  trouble  with  the  plan  is  that  it  is  a  plan  for 
grown-up  people.  Boys  do  not  like  to  sit  still.  Its 
meetings  are  based  on  the  class-meeting  idea,  and 
boys  were  never  made  to  go  to  class-meetings.  It 
usually  has  women  leaders,  and  this  makes  the  matur- 
ing boy  uneasy.  It  often  has  in  it  children  of  all 
ages,  and  the  clan-bounds  of  boys  are  very  strict 
about  equality  of  age. 

The  psychologist  finds  other  weaknesses  which  the 
boy  would  not  be  able  to  define.  He  finds  fault  be- 
cause the  leader  is  not  only  generally  a  woman,  but  a 
young,  inexperienced  and  untrained  woman.  The  ef- 
fort is  made  to  get  the  best  leaders,  but  the  United 
Society  officers  have  repeatedly  said,  that  if  a  trained 
leader  cannot  be  secured,  a  zealous  young  person  or  a 
committee  of  young  people  should  go  ahead  with  the 


90  The  Boy   Problem 

society.  The  soul  of  an  adolescent  child  is  too  fair 
and  fine  a  thing  to  be  handled  by  a  willing  but  ig- 
norant girl  or  bandied  about  by  a  committee.  If  the 
pastor,  if  the  deacons  or  deaconesses,  if  the  wise  fa- 
thers and  mothers  do  not  see  here  the  most  important 
work  of  the  church,  then  let  the  spiritual  nurture  of 
the  children  come  in  some  other  way. 

The  organization  is  smitten  with  the  plague  of 
uniformity,  which  possesses  the  Sunday-school.  No 
matter  what  the  local  membership  or  circumstances, 
every  band  is  urged  to  take  the  uniform  topics  and  to 
adopt  the  same  affiliated  ideas.  Tliese  topics  deal 
much  with  rest,  peace,  resignation  and  introspection, 
essentially  feminine  themes,  when,  as  Gulick  has 
pointed  out,  the  whole  trend  of  a  boy's  nature  is 
heroic,  objective,  katabolic.  In  actual  practice  the 
pledge  too  often  becomes  a  "half-way  covenant" 
which,  instead  of  a  stepping-stone  into  the  church,  is 
made  a  substitute  for  church  membership. 

On  the  other  hand  such  religious  bands  as  these  are 
splendid  untrammelled  opportunities  for^  children  to 
serve  God  and  perform  religious  duty.  They  give  in- 
stant definiteness  to  consecration.  The  word  "En- 
deavor" was  an  inspiration.  It  expresses  the  ideals 
of  youth.  To  try,  to  persist,  to  attain,  these  are  the 
things  a  boy  wants  to  do.  The  Junior  idea  has  in  it 
the  three  things  which  I  shall  say  later  are  fundamen- 
tal  to  work  that  shall  help  boys :  something  to  love, 
I  something  to  know,  and  something  to  do.  There  is 
the  hearty  devotion  to  the  personal  Christ,  the  dis- 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      91 

position  to  seek  wiser  ways  of  instructing  the  children 
and  the  splendidly  planned' activities  of  the  various 
committees.  Notice  how  the  boy  who  wriggles  like 
an  eel  during  the  prayer-meeting  and  pops  up  to  give 
a  "testimony"  and  then  pops  down  to  stick  a  pin  into 
his  neighbor — with  equal  enthusiasm — shines  in  do- 
ing the  chores  of  a  social  or  in  works  of  mercy  for 
which  on^  would  suppose  he  would  have  no  heart. 
He  wants  to  be  doing  something.  If  I  were  going  to 
have  a  caste  called  ''the  active  membership"  at  all,  I  . 
would  have  it  consist  of  those  who  are  active  witlv^ 
their  hands  rather  than  with  their  tongues,  an  inner 
guild  of  those  who  will  agree  to  take  definite  tasks 
and  do  them.  The  wiser  Endeavor  leaders  are  gath- 
ering up  to  themselves  the  activities  of  the  various 
straggling  minor  societies  of  the  church  and  some 
of  them  are  adding  drills,  athletics,  camps,  etc.  The 
Endeavor  hosts,  "the  army  of  the  daybreak,"  have  the 
enthusiasm,  the  confidence,  the  consecration  and  the 
opportunity  to  take  hold  of  the  boys,  and  do  for  them 
what  no  one  else  can  do.  Let  the  directors  of  the" 
movement  gradually  retire  methods  that  are  merely ^ 
imitative  of  adults  and  that  insist  on  iron  conformi- 
ties, and  affiliate  with  themselves  some  of  the  other 
forms  of  work  named  in  this  chapter,  and  then  the 
movement  will  furnish  the  leadership  and  the  goal  to 
a  multitude  of  boys  who  need  only  the  right  touch 
to  ripen  them  into  Christian  manhood. 

In  connection  with  the  twentieth  birthday  of  the 
movement,  in  February,  1901,  a  statement  was  issued 


92  The  Boy  Problem 

by  the  trustees  of  the  United  Society  defining  the 
flexibility  and  adaptabihty  of  the  movement,  in  which 
it  was  declared  that  the  essential  of  the  pledge  is  ''to 
do  what  Christ  would  like  to  have  us  do,"  and  that 
societies  based  upon  several  very  inclusive  principles 
which  nearly  all  can  accept  are  in  fact  Christian  En- 
deavor Societies,  without  regard  to  the  special  meth- 
ods of  organization  or  service,  for  which  each  should 
"turn  for  authoritative  instruction  to  the  pastor  and 
church  with  which  it  is  connected."  Secretary  Baer 
adds  to  the  official  announcement  of  this  step :  "Pas- 
tors have  the  fullest  liberty  to  frame  the  covenant  ob- 
ligation into  any  form  of  words  they  deem  wise,  and 
so  long  as  they  have  the  element  of  obligation  care- 
fully expressed  .  .  .  the  society  is  a  Christian  En- 
deavor Society."  President  Francis  E.  Clark,  an- 
swering a  personal  letter  from  the  author  in  which  he 
asked  if  a  society  of  boys,  formed  without  special 
Christian  Endeavor  features  but  preparatory  to  mem- 
bership in  an  older  society,  could  be  classed  as  a  Jun- 
ior or  Intermediate  Endeavor  Society  replied:  "It 
seems  to  me  with  the  Juniors  and  Intermediates  that 
there  may  be  even  larger  flexibility  than  in  the  Senior 
society,  especially  when  the  pastor  has  them  tinder 
his  own  supervision  and  is  training  them  for  useful- 
ness in  the  church,  which  of  course  is  the  great  object 
of  Christian  Endeavor.  You  say  'without  special 
Endeavor  features,'  but  special  Endeavor  features 
embrace  the  learning  of  Scripture,  simple  prayer  ser- 
vices, catechetical  methods,  and  all  possible  kinds  of 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      93 

work  appropriate  to  boys  and  girls.  Many  or  all  of 
these  plans  you  would  approve  of,  I  am  confident, 
and  the  children's  society  along  these  lines  would 
be,  I  should  think,  a  good  Junior  society.  We  desire 
that  there  should  be  the  utmost  liberty  consistent  with 
keeping  the  Endeavor  movement  on  a  genuinely  re- 
ligious, and  an  outspokenly  rehgious  basis." 

These  statements  are  surely  most  gratifying  and 
will  be  timely  in  preventing  unfortunate  revolts  from 
a  movement  that  has  been  guided  with  such  unselfish 
and  thoughtful  devotion.  While  the  United  Society 
may  not  pioneer  the  freer  methods  here  suggested,  it 
does  thus  admit  them,  and  if  they  have  value  they  will 
leaven  the  organization.  The  Endeavor  movement 
was  certainly  the  first  recognition  of  the  activities  of 
the  young,  and  while  it  may,  in  practice,  have  dispro- 
portionately emphasized  the  activity  of  the  tongue,  it 
still  stands  for  activity  of  every  sort  and  holds  out  a 
kindly  hand  to  new  methods.  Though  originated 
and  shaped  before  the  new  philosophy  of  education 
became  paramount,  its  fellowship  means  hospitality 
and  unity.  Children  look  forward  to  being  enrolled 
in  it.  It  is  the  neardst  step  to  what  I  shall  urge,  the 
affiliation  in  one  organization  for  nurture  and  activity 
of  all  the  children  in  the  church.  I  counsel  then  that 
while  one  may  well  use  what  seem  to  me  more  fruitful 
methods  than  the  formal  prayer-meeting,  the  iron- 
clad pledge  with  its  police  executive,  the  lookout 
committee,  etc.,  and  may  actually  give  to  the  society 
formed  some  other  name — since  names  are  cheap  and 


94  ^^^^   Boy   Problem 

may  be  multiplied — ^the  chief  designation  should  be, 
the  Boys'  Christian  Endeavor  Society.  This  retains 
the  fellowship,  prevents  the  multiplication  of  petty  so- 
cieties and  enables  the  boys  to  be  graduated  into  the 
Young  People's  Society  of  Christian  Endeavor, 
which  is  probably  already  in  the  church.  That,  too, 
must  feel  the  influence  of  the  new  methods,  yet  can 
makel  use  of  more  of  the  regulation  Endeavor  prac- 
tices. 

I  give  no  special  space  here  to  the  Epworth  League 
and  the  other  societies,  imitative  of  Christian  En- 
deavor, since  what  I  have  said  of  one  applies  largely 
to  all. 

Now  to  the  Brotherhoodsf  of  St.  Andrew,  and  of 
Andrew  and  Philip.  The  strength  of  these  brother- 
hoods is  loyalty.  The  gregarious  spirit  of  boys  has 
in  it  a  great  capacity  for  affection,  as  is  seen  in  the 
strength  of  college  secret  societies  among  youths  not 
out  of  the  adolescent  period.  That  spirit  is  beautiful 
and  ennobling.  The  Church  is  an  institution  as 
worthy  of  passionate  devotions  and  of  "team-work" 
as  the  college.  The  Brotherhoods  seize  this  roman- 
tic affection  and  fasten  it.  Tliere  is  a  disadvantage 
,  in  that,  in  either  case,  the  Boys'  Brotherhood  was  an 
^afterthought,  and  too  often  the  work  is  modeled  after 
that  for  men,  instead  of  appealing  directly  to  boys. 
/  There  is  sometimes,  too,  but  not  always,  the  impres- 
sion given  that  the  play-element  is  for  the  sake  of 
wanning  those  who  are  not  Christians,  instead  of  be- 
ing the  legitimate  employment  of  the  Christian  boys 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      95 

themselves.  I  have  been  surprised  at  the  slow 
growth  of  the  Brotherhood  in  some  regions  which  are 
usually  hospitable  to  new  idqas.  I  can  explain  this 
only  by  the  fact  that  too  much  reliance  has  been 
placed  upon  the  Rules  of  Prayer  and  Service,  which 
are  rather  too  narrowly  phrased  to  excite  and  hold 
interest.  I  consider  the  Brotherhood  idea  to  be  act- 
ually more  adaptable  to  boys  than  to  men.  The 
evangelizing  of  boys  by  other  boys  is  in  the  idea  of 
the  order,  and  the  word  "Brotherhood"  expresses 
,what  every  boy  covets.  I  value  the  Brotherhoods 
very  highly  as  opportunities  afforded  boys  to  develop 
their  early  Christian  characters  in  each  other's  fellow- 
ship under  mature,  manly  leaders.  Almost  every 
men's  league  in  a  church  needs  a  boy  branch  to  pre- 
vent it  from  becoming  selfish.  This  adopting  of  the 
boys  by  the  men  in  a  church,  in  a  godfatherly  sense, 
is  a  magnificent  mission. 

I  have  been  rather  favorably  impressed  with  the   \ 
ideas  of  a  young  organization  called  the  Boys'  Broth:^  • 
erhood  of  Philadelphia.     It  has  the  advantage  of  hav-     | 
ing  never  been  the  tail  to  a  men's  movement  and  of     j 
combining  from  the  start  the  boys  of  several  strong    j 
churches  in  a  large  city.     The  plan  is  to  form  chap- 
ters of  the  brotherhood  of  the  boys  of  separate  Sun- 
day-schools, thus  giving  the  dynamic  and  esprit  de 
corps  of    numbers    while    retaining    church    loyalty. 
The  activities  are  mostly  athletic.     The  result  desired 
is  to  make  a  "gang"  of  the  better  class  of  boys  so 
strong  as  to  compel  respect  and  imitation  for  their 


96  The  Boy   Problem 

muscular  style  of  Christianity.  By  some  such  plan  a 
number  of  churches  could  pool  issues  in  furnishing 
the  attractions  that  boys  like  and  yet  each  retain  the 
privilege  of  furnishing  its  own  boys  the  special  relig- 
ious instruction  which  it  deemed  wise.  It  is  toward 
this  plan  that  I  hope  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  is  tending. 

The  most  interesting  church  work  that  I  know  of 
anywhere  among  boys  is  that  exhibited  in  an  organ- 
ization known  as  the  Captains  of  Ten,  originated  and 
conducted  by  Miss  A.  B.  Mackintire  of  Dr.  Alexan- 
der McKenzie's  church  in  Cambridge.  We  have  here 
a  successful  boys'  club  conducted  by  a  woman.  Here 
is  a  woman  who,  without  fad  or  publicity,  has  worked 
out  during  a  dozen  years  a  plan  which  fits  the  best 
theories.  The  basis^is  hand-work.  The  Captains  of 
Ten  are  boys  from  8  to  14,  who  are  captains  of  their 
ten  fingers.  Cardboard  work,  weaving,  whittling, 
sloyd,  carving  and  other  activities  are  followed  by 
graded  groups.  Miss  Mackintire  is  a  trained  sloyd 
worker  and  has  a  remarkable  ingenuity  and  patience 
in  originating  elaborate  and  dignified  annual  enter- 
tainments by  the  boys,  each  of  which  is  a  surprise  and 
wonder.  The  interest  is  missions,  which  are  taught 
graphically,  chiefly  at  the  monthly  business  meeting. 
The  boys  learn  to  like  to  make  generous  gifts  from 
the  proceeds  of  their  festivals  and  sales  of  handiwork 
for  the  benevolent  causes  which  they  know  about  and 
care  for.  At  the  entertainments  the  dramatic  instinct 
is  fully  recognized  and  the  constructive  faculties  are 
utilized  in  designing  costumes  and  scenery.    Loyalty 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      97 

and  self-government  are  taught  incidentally.  The 
older  boys  become  volunteer  workers  to  help  begin- 
ners, and  are  graduated  into  the  Order  of  the  Knights 
of  King  Arthur.  A  personality  that  has  been  devoted 
to  boys  with  such  earnestness  and  fideUty  becomes  a 
masterful  influence  on  character.  To  walk  down  the 
room  on  the  walls  of  which  are  placed  the  photo- 
graphs of  the  grouped  Captains  for  successive  years — 
there  have  been  over  200  boys  in  all — and  see  the 
growth  in  maturity  thus  visibly  portrayed  is  an  im- 
pressive vision.  These  boys  seem  to  ripen  into  Chris- 
tian life  naturally,  although  they  represent  two  quite 
different  levels  of  society,  and  usually  come  into  the 
church.  There  is  no  Junior  Endeavor  Society,  or 
other  religious  society  for  children,  here.  This  illus- 
tation  suggests  the  power  of  broader  methods 
wielded  by  sense  and  consecration  to  assist  in  the 
actual  religious  development  of  boyhood.  V:,^ 

Jhe  Knights  of  King  Arthur,  devised  by  the  author,  ! 
is  an  order  of  Christian  knighthood  for  boys,  which, 
because  it  differs  from  any  other  plan  that  we  have 
mentioned,  may  deserve  description.  It  is  based  upon 
the  romantic,  hero-loving,  play,  constructive  and  im- 
aginative instincts  which  ripen  at  about  14,  but  it  has 
been  found  possible  and  desirable  to  prepare  the  boys 
for  the  special  features  of  the  order  by  preliminary 
organization  and  by  holding  up  these  special  features 
as  something  to  look  forward  to,  at  12.    Its  purpose  1 
is  to  bring  back  to  the  world,  and  especially  to  its|\ 
youthTThe  spirit  of  chivalry,  courtesy,  deference  toU 


98  The  Boy   Problem 

womaiihoodi,  recognition  of  the  noblesse  oblige,  and 
Christian  daring,  and  ideal  of  that  kingdom  of  knight- 
hness  which  King  Arthur  promised  he  would  bring 
back  when  he  returns  from  Avilion.    In  this  order  he 
appears  again.    Unlike  many  means  of  helping  boys, 
this  one  does  not  claim  to  be  complete  in  itself.    It  is 
only  a  skeleton  organization,  attracting  instant  pleas- 
ure, affording  wholesome  recreation  and  instruction 
and  serving  as  the  framework  upon  which  to  build 
instrumentalities  that  may  particularly  fit  local  needs. 
It  is  formed  upon  the  model  of  a  college  Greek-letter 
fraternity  rather  than  upon  that  of  a  secret  lodge,  al- 
though it  is  beUeved  that  the  satisfaction  of  the  love 
of  ritual,  mystery  and  parade  in  this  way  in  adoles- 
cence will  often  prevent  the  lodge-room  craze  which 
might  later  become  extravagant  and  destructive  of 
\  domestic  felicity.     It  is  not  secret.     The  boys  when 
they  gather  for  a  "conclave"  march  into  their  hall  and 
seat  themselves  in  a  circle  in  imitation  of  the  Round 
Table,  with  a  King  at  the  head,  the  Merlin  or  adult 
leader  at  his  side,  and  the  various  functionaries  of 
their  "Castle"  in  their  places.    In  order  to  avoid  jeal- 
ousy there  is  constant  rotation  in  office.     Each  boy 
bears  the  name  of  a  hero,  either  an  ancient  knight  or 
a  modern  man  of  noble  life,  and  is  known  by  that 
name  in  the  castle  and  is  supposed  to  be  familiar  with 
the  history  of  the  one  for  whom  he  is  named  and  to 
emulate  his  virtues.     The  ritual  is  short  but  impres- 
sive.   Its  preparation  and  the  arranging  of  the  initia- 
tions, which  embody  the  grades  of  page,  esquire  and 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults      99 

knight,  and  which  teach  lessons  important  to  boy- 
hood, give  room  for  the  constructive  instinct  in  the 
making  of  regaHa,  banners,  swords  and  spears,  throne,, 
etc.  These  initiations  exercise  the  play  instinct  with-r' 
out  giving  opportunity  for  physical  violence.  Hero- 
worship  is  developed  by  a  Roll  of  Noble  Deeds,  a 
castle  album  of  portraits  of  heroes,  the  reading  to- 
gether of  heroic  books,  and  the  offering  of  ranks  in 
**the  peerage"  and  the  sacred  honor  of  "the  Siege 
Perilous"  for  athletic,  scholarly  or  self-sacrificing  at- 
tainments. Those  honors  which  involve  mere  physi- 
cal effort  are  rewards  for  wholesome  emulation,  while 
the  recognition  of  actual  heroism  is  conferred,  not  to 
the  boaster,  but  by  the  spontaneous  tribute  of  his 
fellows.  The  ranks  of  esquire  and  knight  in  the  castle 
are  planned  to  be  occupied  by  those  who  shall  volun- 
tarily, after  a  term  of  probation,  accept  a  simple,  self- 
originated  covenant  of  purity,  temperance  and  rever- 
ence or  enter  the  manliness  of  actual  Christian  confes- 
sion by  church  membership.  For  definite  activity 
and  in  satisfying  the  instinct  for  roaming  and  adven- 
ture, "quests"  are  suggested  in  the  way  of  walks  to 
historic  sites  and  cooperative  deeds  of  kindness.  The 
local  Merlin  is  urged  to  develop  the  resources  of  the 
boys  in  his  own,  way,  as  upon  the  manner  in  which  he 
does  this  the  life  of  the  castle  will  ultimately  depend. 
Those  who  use  nothing  but  the  material  furnished  do 
not  make  much  with  the  plan.  Almost  everything 
can  be  clad  in  imagination)  with  the  knightly  charac- 
ter.   The  summer  camp  will  become  the  literal  castle 


lOO  The  Boy  Problem 

and  its  environs  the  country  of  the  paynims,  who  are 
to  be  protected,  not  ravaged.  The  ball  team  will  be 
the  castle  armed  band  and  its  victories  the  occasion 
of  mild  ''wassail."  The  boys  will  often  elaborate 
further  rituals  of  their  own,  andj  patriotism  and  mis- 
sions can  be  taught  under  this  disguise.  Often  the 
members  show  a  touching  tenderness  toward  a  group 
of  younger  boys  who  are  under  instruction  prepara- 
tory to  being  admitted  and  refer  in  later  days  to  their 
memories  of  the  order  with  something  of  the  same 
feeling  that  the  graduate  does  to  his  college  days. 
There  is  in  some  such  approach  to  the  best  in  the  boy 
the  possibility  of  great  good.  In  a  successful  castle 
loyalty,  chivalry  and  service — the  three  watchwords 
of  the  order — are  actually  developed  in  very  pleasing 
ways.  The  plan  is  thoroughly  Christian  and  is  more 
often  found  in  churches  than  elsewhere,  although 
adapted  to  a  union  group  in  the  community.  Its 
elasticity  makes  it  popular  to  lise  with  other  formal 
agencies.  But  it  requires  considerable  preparatory 
reading  and  planning  by  the  leader,  and,  to  reach  the 
best  results,  as  in  all  other  work  that  amounts  to  any- 
thing, much  care  and  patience  all  the  way  along. 

The  Sunday-school  is  the  greatest  educational  in- 
stitute of  the  church.  Despite  the  abundant  criticisms 
with  which  it  is  favored,  the  character  of  its  leaders 
and  membership,  the  authorization  and  labor  which 
it  has  received  and  its  genuine  value  and  unique  op- 
portunity will  cause  it  to  continue  to  be  the  place 
where  the  church  does  most  of  its  teaching,  and  puts 


Organizations  Formed  fm;Boys\hy  'AMl^  ;  ipi 

forth  its  best  work.  I  do  not  need  to  point  out  its 
excellences.  I  have  no  desire  to  carp  at  its  defects. 
Neither  will  I  describe  the  recent  outlines  proposed 
for  the  perfect  school  of  the  future.  These  are  re- 
ferred to  in  the  Bibliography.  Each  proposition  must 
be  interpreted  by  its  maker's  ideal  of  the  Sunday- 
school.  I  will  briefly  state  my  own,  and  in  the  light 
of  it  the  suggestions  that  follow  will  get  their  mean- 
ing. 

The  Sunday-school  has  three  functions.  First  and 
chiefly,  it  is  the  agency,  supplemental  to  the  home, 
where  children  and  young  people  are  taught  the 
Christian  religion  of  love  and  service.  Second,  it  is 
a  place  where  older  persons  may  study  the  higher 
problems  of  religious  thought  and  duty.  Third,  it  is 
the  place  where  people  are  trained  to  teach  rehgion  to 
others.  These  three  functions  suggest  as  the  divi- 
sions of  the  Sunday-school,  the  primary  and  adoles- 
cent grades,  the  adult  classes,  the  normal  department. 
I  shall  speak  almost  entirely  of  the  first  division. 

Ideally,  the  Sunday-school  for  children  is  not  a 
school  at  all.  In  an  Edenic  condition  it  is  an  exten- 
sion of  the  home.  It  is  a  place  where  a  wise  and  good 
man  or  woman  gathers  a  group  of  young  people  to 
whom  he  is  in  the  truest  sense  a  god-parent  in  order 
to  help  and  supplement  the  home  in  teaching  the  way 
of  life  and  encouraging  children  to  walk  in  it.  There 
are  of  course  pedagogic  laws  to  be  appHed  in  Sunday- 
school  instruction,  but  the  aim  should  not  be  to  imi- 
tate the  public  school.     At  present  the  trend  seems 


10^  :  The  Boy  Problem 

to  be  in  the  direction  of  such  imitation,  both  on  the 
part  of  the  conservative  leaders  of  the  International 
System  who  have  a  passion  for  uniformity  and  on  the 
part  of  the  religious  pedagogists  who  naturally  and 
properly  wish  to  learn  all  that  the  public  school  has  to 
teach.  The  model  of  the  Sunday-school  should  be 
rather  the  social  settlement  classes  and  clubs,  where 
the  teacher  and  scholars  are  simply  friends  who  meet 
because  of  interest  in  the  same  subject.  The  Sunday- 
school  class  is  the  proper  unit  for  all  the  organized 
work  of  the  church  among  young  people.  I  look  for- 
ward to  the  day  when,  instead  of  having  a  Sunday- 
school  where  a  great  many  children  come  for  only  an 
hour  on  Sunday  and  several  forlorn  Endeavor  socie- 
ties, mission  bands  and  clubs  of  boys  and  girls  which 
struggle  to  hold  the  interest  of  but  a  small  fraction  on 
week  days,  each  class  or  group  of  classes  shall  have  its 
week-day  session  which  shall  be  an  authorized  and 
fully  attended  meeting  of  the  school.  Here  the  secu- 
lar mass-club  idea  of  esprit  de  corps  and  the  group-club 
intensive  and  personal  work  would  both  be  exempli- 
fied. 

The  first  essential  for  an  improved  school  is  a 
trained  superintendent.  Behind  even  the  homely 
group-class  idea  must  be  the  man  of  ideal  and  knowl- 
edge. In  the  larger  churches  such  men  are  being  set 
apart  to  this  as  a  life-work.  There  is  a  great  demand 
in  the  smaller  churches  for  ministers  who  are  teachers 
as  well  as  pastors. 

Then  we  must  have  good  teachers.     We  naturally 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     103 

turn  to  our  public  schools.  But  President  Hyde  tells 
our  public  school  teachers  to  treat  one  who  would 
have  them  teach  Sundays  "as  a  murderer  who  seeks 
your  life."  Still  many  of  them  do  teach,  and  they  are 
a  blessing  to  our  schools.  I  believe  the  mid-week 
meeting  of  the  church  is  to  become  more  and  more  a 
place  where  the  pastor-teacher  shall  confer  with  the 
laymen-teachers  as  to  the  principles  and  methods  of 
Bible  teaching.  Fathers  and  mothers  and  other  peo- 
ple who  have  retained  their  childhood  may  thus  be- 
come competent  and  efficient  teachers. 

In  regard  to  the  system  of  instruction  much  prog- 
ress may  be  expected,  for  much  has.  already  been  se- 
cured. While  I  feel  that  we  are  much  indebted  to.  all 
who  are  at  work  upon  new  systems  I  am  convinced 
that — for  the  Main  school  at  least — the  International 
Lesson  System  will,  in  an  improved  form,  continue  to 
command  the  allegiance  of  the  great  majority.  The 
committee  is  surely  desirous  to  give  what  is  wanteid 
just  as  soon  as  the  want  is  manifest.  The  ideal  course 
toward  which  I  believe  they  are  moving  is  a  perma- 
nent, not  a  changing  one.  The  recognition  has  al- 
ready been  made  that  the  infant  department  and  the 
adult  classes  need  different  lesson  material  from  the 
main  school.  What  I  hope  will  be  granted  is  that 
there  are  ways  of  approach  to  the  Bible  natural  to 
each  advancing  age.  When  this  has  been  allowed 
and  the  sketch  of  a  permanent  system  for  the  various 
ages  has  been  m*ade,  their  splendid  work  will  be  ac- 
complished. 


I04  The  Boy  Problem 

The  next  important  thing  is  the  way  of  instruc- 
tion. Two  vicious  methods  are  now  in  vogue :  the 
Lancastrian  or  catechetical  and  the  homiletic.  The 
first  is  obselete  in  all  other  education.  The  second, 
confined  to  religious  instruction  and  old-fashioned 
school  "grammar"  work,  is  based  on  the  idea  that  the 
Spirit  of  God  and  of  common  sense  is  so  absent  from 
the  child  that  he  will  never  see  the  good  nor  do  it  un- 
less a  moral  is  tagged  to  every  verse  in  the  lesson. 
The  school  of  the  future  will  give  the  little  children 
story-talks  on  the  heavenly  Father  in  nature  and 
providence,  and  the  child's  relation  to  Him  as  illus- 
trated by  the  childhood  of  Jesus  and  of  other  charac- 
ters and  by  familiar  objects  and  events.  The  myth- 
ologic,  the  sensuous,  the  dramatic  and  the  egoistic 
will  be  recognized  in  the  stories  that  follow,  taken 
from  the  heroes,  myths  and  miracles  of  the  Bible  and 
other  literatures.  In  general  the  Old  Testament 
ideals  and  narratives  wall  precede  the  New,  but  not  in- 
variably. Adolescence  seems  to  need  the  life  of 
Jesus  studied  as  vitally  as  possible.  Here  the  story- 
methods  yield  to  frank  conversation.  The  restless- 
ness and  doubts  and  moral  cravings  of  the  period  re- 
quire also  a  first-hand  dealing  with  pressing  ethical 
problems.  Here,  too,  comes  the  pressure  for  spirit- 
ual decision.  In  later  years  the  facts  of  Biblical  criti- 
cism and  the  literature  of  the  Bible  become  appro- 
priate topics. 

I  am  inclined  to  prophesy  an  end  to  'the  lesson 
quarterlies,  at  least  to  the  almanac  style.     The  young 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     105 

children  will  carry  home  pictures  and'  occasional  il- 
lustrative material,  and  will  do  some  little  handicraft 
or  "laboratory"  work.  Those  a  little  older  will  have 
lap-boards  and  pencils  and  paper  and  do  some  water- 
color  or  paper-pulp  or  whittling  work,  largely  outside 
the  class.  The  young  men  and  women  will  use  note- 
books. If  the  quarterly  departs,  then  the  teacher's 
manual  will  be  magnified.  Its  "helps"  will  not  be  ex- 
pository or  homiletic,  but  they  will  consist  in  instruc- 
tion to  broaden  and  enlighten  the  mind  of  the  teacher, 
which  is  the  only  way  to  get  better  teaching. 

As  to  the  boys,  who,  at  the  age  of  greatest  ap- 
proachability,  are  being  lost  to  the  school  in  greatest 
numbers,  I  think  the  courses  should  be  shorter — say, 
three  complete  courses,  each  on  a  great  Hfe  or  topic, 
in  a  year.  They  should  be  undated,  so  that  a  lesson 
may  be  postponed  if  something  more  important — 
such  as  a  matter  of  personal  ethics — takes  the  hour. 
I  favor  the  use  of  pencils,  crayons,  and  elven  water- 
colors  and  jack-knives,  if  the  time  and  room  permit. 
If  not,  the  proposed  week-day  session  may  give  the 
opportunity.  The  constant  endeavor  with  boys  must 
be  to  keep  the  point ^of  contact  in  real  life,  in  school, 
playground,  current  events,  within  reach.  The  novel 
methods  suggested  would  be  thought  'by  some  to 
make  the  getting  of  teachers  harder,  but  it  ought  not 
tO|be  so.  Why  should  not  people'  prepare  each  year 
for  a  twelve  weeks'  course,  as  a  professor  does  for  his 
laboratory  course,  who  aannot  teach  all  the  year? 
The  methods  I  propose  make  the  question  of  order  so 


\ 


1 06  The  Boy  Problem 

simple  that  it  often  removes  the  terror  of  teaching 
boys. 

Very  few  classes  of  older  boys  can  be  held  unless 
their  "gang-spirit"  is  recognized  by  a  week-day  or- 
ganization. I  think  teachers  of  such  boys  should 
plan,  not  for  a  yearly  feed,  but  for  a  regular  if  only 
occasional  group-club  of  their  classes,  separately  or 
together.  These  will  constitute  the  Boys'  Endeavor 
Society  of  the  church.  Among  boys,  especially,  the 
three  things  for  which  Professor  Peabody  pleads  as 
demanded  for  the  religion  of  a  college  student  are 
needed  in  Sunday-school  work :  reality,  rationality 
and  personal  service.  A  teacher  of  genuine  character, 
a  teaching  that  neither  skulks  nor  dodges,  and  a  gen- 
erous class-life — these  make  the  successful  boys'  class. 

The  most  adequate  lesson  material  now  published 
by  any  denomination  is  furnished  by  the  Unitarians. 
They  have  several  admirable  biographical  courses 
which,  nominally  intended  for  adults,  are  fine  for  boys. 
Mr.  W.  H.  Davis'  graphic  lessons  are  commended 
for  hand-work.  The  best  complete  graded  school 
system  of  which  I  know  is  that  in  use  in  the  Taber- 
nacle school  connected  with  Chicago  Commons.  In 
outline  it  is  as  follows : 

"The  Graded  Bible  School.  There  are  twelve 
grades  in  the  Graded  Bible  School,  corresponding  to 
the  grades  in  the  public  schools  and  covering  the  pe- 
riod from  six  to  eighteen  years  in  the  scholar's  life.  The 
school  is  divided  into  Primary,  Junior  and  Senior  De- 
partments, each  including  four  grades.     The  Primary 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     107 

and  Junior  equal  the  period  of  grammar  school  and 
the  Senior  that  of  high  school  in  our  public  school 
system.  In  arranging  the  curriculum  the  aim  has 
been  tq  adapt  the  work  to  the  needs  of  the  children 
and  young  people  in  the  dififerent  periods  of  their  de- 
velopment, in  accordance  with  the  results  of  the  best 
modern  child  study,  and  also  to  cover  the  Bible  mate- 
rial in  a  complete  and  orderly  way.  While  the  chief 
subject  of  study  is  the  Bible,  attention  is  paid  to 
church  history,  missions,  present  day  problems  in 
ethics.  The  course  naturally  falls  into  six  divisions. 
The  first  two  cover  the  receptive  period  in  the  child's 
life,  the  work  being  confined  to  Bible  truths  and  Bible 
stories,  nature  lessons,  object-lessons  and  the  memor- 
izing of  Scripture  passages.  The  next  two  divisions 
include  the  decision  period  in  the  child's  life.  The 
work  is  in  the  New  Testament,  including  a  careful 
study  of  the  Life  of  Christ,  the  Early  Church  and  sim- 
ple Christian  teaching.  In  the  fifth  division  the  Old 
Testament  is  studied),  and  in  the  sixth  division,  when 
the  young  person  is  in  the  reconstruction  period  of 
life,  the  aim  is  to  inculcate  Christian  duties  and  meet 
the  questionings  and  difficulties  which  arise  in  the 
mind  of  a  young  person  at  this  time." 

The  school  of  week-day  scope,  for  which  I  plead, 
must  be  a  school  of  practice  as  well  as  instruction. 
The  sessions  themselves  give  room  for  some  ethical 
applications.  Recently  I  preached  a  sermon  on  steal- 
ing up-stairs  while  a  child  was  making  away  with 
some  of  the  contents  of  the  primary  teachers'  cabinet 


io8  The  Boy  Problem 

down-stairs.  (This  is  an  illustration  by  way  of  con- 
trast). Disorder  and  ridicule  of  others  are  to  be  dealt 
with  sternly,  not  for  the  sake  of  the  discipline  of  the 
schools,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  morals  of  the  scholars. 
Inattention  and  disrespect  to  teachers,  which  are  so 
common,  are  "serious  not  because  those  who  offend  do 
not  listen  to  the  teaching,  but  because  they  are  direct- 
ly contradicting  it  by  their  conduct. 

More  than  this,  the  school  must  stand  for  actual 
religious  activity.  It  may  be  even  demoralizing  con- 
tinually to  impress  moral  principles  and  arouse  noble 
emotions  and  offer  no  chance  to  exercise  them.  This 
is  the  chief  reason  why  I  urge  that  the  week-day  so- 
cieties of  the  church  be  affiliated  with  the  Sunday- 
school.  It  is  not  enough  to  give  a  missionary  offer- 
ing to  a  cause  which  no  scholar  may  know  much  of 
anything  about,  and  to  which  many  have  contributed 
nothing.  The  children  must  learn  to  do  for  others, 
doing  that  really  costs  time  and  effort  and  skill.  A 
school  that  furnishes  manly  teachers,  frank,  honest 
instruction,  wholesome  social  fellowship  and  loving 
service  for  others  will  hold  a  boy  even  through  his 
years  of  restlessness  and  doubt. 

The  catechetical  revival  is  attaining  considerable  re- 
cent prominence  and  is  assuming  some  dignity  on 
account  of  its  antiquity.  If  the  movement  be  one  for 
doctrinal  instruction,  as,  in  the  Presbyterian,  Protes- 
tant Episcopal,  Lutheran,  Reformed  and  Methodist 
churches,  which  have  catechisms  prescribed  by  church 
law,  it  presumably  is,  we  have,  on  the  one  hand,  the 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     109 

opposition  of  the  psychologists,  as  Professor  C.  R. 
Henderson  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  who  says, 
"I  know  no  catechism  which  seems  to  me  suitable  for 
any  person,  young  or  old,  to  commit  to  memory ;" 
Pres.  G.  Stanley  Hall  of  Clark  University,  who  says, 
"The  teacher  should  shun  all  catechetical  methods, 
most  of  all  those  that  require  yes  or  no  for  an  answer, 
and  next  those  that  insist  upon  a  form  of  words,  which 
always  tend  to  become  a  substitute  for  thought.  Al- 
though catechisms  may  have  their  place,  they  are  not 
for  children ;"  Professor  H.  C.  King  of  OberHn,  who 
declares  that  "Christ's  own  method,  in  bringing  his 
disciples  to  the  confession  of  his  Messiahship,  was  one 
of  punctilious  avoidance  of  all  dogmatic  statements 
upon  the  matter;"  Professor  George  A.  Coe,  who  in 
his  "Spiritual  Life,"  quotes  a  young  teacher  as  saying, 
"Oh,  why,  why  did  my  parents  try  to  equip  me  with  a 
doctrinal  system  in  childhood?  .  .  .  When  I  be- 
gan to  doubt  some  points,  I  felt  obliged  to  throw  lall 
overboard,"  and  who  adds  himself:  "It  is  simply  im- 
possible to  supply  a  child  with  real  solutions  of  the 
problems  of  life.  .  .  .  We  should  include  a  great 
deal  of  religious  activity,  but  very  little  religious 
theory.  .  .  .  What  he  wants  most,  after  all,  is 
room;"  and  Sir  Joshua  Fitch,  who  says  of  them:  "I 
attach  small  value  to  catechisms.  We  never  employ 
them  in  teacihing  any  other  subject  than  religion. 
And  the  reasons  are  obvious.  They  are  stereotyped 
questions  and  stereotyped  answers.  They  leave  no 
room  for  the  play  of  intelligence  upon  and  around  the 


no  The  Boy  Problem 

subject.  They  stand  between  the  giver  and  receiver 
of  knowledge,  and  do  not  help  either  of  them  much.  . 
.  .  I  appeal  to  your  own  experience.  Do  you  find 
that  the  fragmentary  answers  which  you  learned*  in 
the  catechism  help  you  much  in  your  religious  life? 
When  I  look  back  on  the  work  of  my  religious  in- 
structors, do  I  find  that  I  learned  most  from  their 
formal  lessons,  or  from  the  influence  of  their  charac- 
ter and  sympathy?"  On  the  other  hand,  the  theo- 
logians are  not  very  encouraging,  as  witness  Professor 
W.  N.  Clarke,  who  approves  the  catechism  theoreti- 
cally but  succinctly  suggests  that  *'at  present  there 
exists  the  deepest  interest  in  Christian  doctrine,  but  it 
takes  the  form  of  question  rather  than  of  answer." 
Professor  A.  W.  Anthony  remarks  :  **Alas !  it  has  been 
only  in  religion  that  men  have  thought  it  needful  to 
inquire  into  devotion  by  means  of  the  catechism.  .  .  . 
.  The  personality  of  the  Christ  is  far  above  all  mere 
formulae  of  religion  and  creed  statements.  It  is  to  a 
Person  that  Christianity  has  ever  invited  its  follow- 
ers." 

Even  the  experiment  of  giving  answers  in  Scripture 
language  does  not  solve  this  difficulty,  since  there  is 
no  more  supple  and  subtle  form  of  theological  bias 
than  a  proof  text,  while  the  plan  of  throwing  upon 
the  children  the  burden  of  framing  answers  upon 
which  the  theologians  have  failed  to  agree  is  still  less 
satisfactory. 

But  in  the  Congregational  church,  at  least,  there 
is  coming  to  the  front  a  group  of  young  men  with 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     iii 

catechisms  of  other  than  doctrinal  purpose.  Dr. 
Doremus  Scudder,  who  is  one  o£  them,  broadly  de- 
lines  catechetics  as  a  conference  between  teacher  and 
pupils,  whose  aim  is  vital  rather  than  doctrinal,  whose 
method  is  to  start  from  a  booklet  of  question  and  an- 
swers, proceed  with  memorizing-  at  home,  mostly  of 
Scripture,  and  culminate  in  free  conversation  in  the 
class,  and  whose  chief  value  is  the  contact  of  children 
with  the  consecrated  personality  of  a  wise  Christian 
teacher.  Catechetics  is  unconsciously,  I  believe,  partly 
a  protest  against  some  of  the  imperfections  of  the 
present  lesson  system  and  Junior  Endeavor  move- 
ment, for  it  is  the  leaders  of  the  Sunday-school  and 
Endeavor  movement  who  are  most  heartily  urging  its 
addition  to  their  equipment.  One  distinct  boon  is 
being  conferred  by  this  revival,  in  that  it  remands  the 
responsibility  for  the  moral  and  spiritual  equipment 
of  the  boys  and  girls  for  life  to  their  chief  spiritual 
teacher,  their  pastor. 

Many  of  the  new  manuals  omit  answers  and  some 
omit  questions,  many  drop  the  word  catechism,  and 
close  inquiry  shows  that  to  the  pastor-teacher  the 
manual  is  simply  the  solution  book,  like  what  the 
school-teacher  surreptitiously  used  when  teaching 
Wentworth's  Geometry,  while  personality  and  free 
fellowship  between  teacher  and  pupils  are  really  every- 
thing. There  are  at  least  four  dangers  which  might 
beset  a  person  who  was  a  mere  imitator  and  used  the 
manual  of  another.  One  danger  is  that  we  forget 
that  while  early  adolescence,  say  the  age  of  twelve,  is 


112  The  Boy  Problem 

the  right  time  to  be  looking  after  the  child,  his  age  for 
formulating  systems  does  not  come  for  five  or  six 
years  later.  Another  danger  is  that  we  should  expect 
to  be  able  to  teach  life  out  of  a  booklet  as  w.e  teach  the 
exact  sciences  and  the  dead  languages.  The  labora- 
tory method  and  not  the  recitation  method,  learning 
by  doing,  is  needed;  A  third  danger  is  that  in  em- 
phasizing memory,  which  we  may  properly  do  since 
the  school  neglects  that  faculty,  we  teach  proof  texts, 
the  dried  figs  of  theology,  instead  of  the  great  inspir- 
ing passages  of  truth  and  faith.  A  ready  made  an- 
swer paralyzes,  not  stimulates  the  mind.  The  last 
danger  is  to  find  thus  the  point  of  contact.  Here  is  a 
bounding,  bursting  boy,  with  his  heroisms  and  enthu- 
siasms, and  a  new  sexual,  social  and  moral  nature  that 
almost  overpowers  him,  full  of  moods,  doubts  and  ob- 
stinacies. Does  the  quiet,  logical,  sweetly  reasonable 
catechetical  method  really  come  to  where  that  boy 
lives  and  find  him  at  home? 

In  the  Episcopal  church,  where  the  method  is  not 
a  recent  experiment  or  a  thing  by  itself,  most  of  these 
objections  are  met  because  of  its  place  in  a  larger  sys- 
tem. It  is  but  one  wheel  of  an  ecclesiastical  machine. 
The  baptized  child  is  accepted  as  a  member  of  the 
ecclesiastical  family,  potentially  regenerate ;  the  cate- 
chism is  not  a  matter  of  special  class  instruction,  but 
it  is  taught  in  the  Sunday-school;  it  is  the  tradition 
and  so  the  expectation  that  the  child  will  come  for- 
ward in  adolescence  to  prove  his  knowledge  of  the 
catechism  in  the  confirmation  class ;  instead  of  wait- 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     113 

ing  for  a  cataclysmal  conversion  and  a  Christian  ex- 
perience before  admitting  the  child  into  full  com- 
munion, the  child  is  admitted  upon  attaining  a  fitting 
age  and  knowledge  of  the  catechism,  and  it  is  believed 
that  in  the  solemn  intei-im  between  confirmation  and 
the  first  communion,  in  the  activities  that  follow  or  in 
the  fold  of  the  church  with  maturing  character,  spirit- 
ual Hfe  will  actually  appear.  As  far  as  the  influence 
of  this  plan  can  be  thrown  about  children,  what  could 
be  more  admirably  planned  to  secure  a  quiet,  normal 
Christian  development  and  a  minimum  of  loss  of  chil- 
dren in  their  growth  from  one  period  to  another  of 
life? 

In  the  non-liturgical  churches  there  must  be  some 
theory  and  scheme  of  the  relation  of  children  to  the 
Church  which  shall  make  it  natural  and  expected  that 
children  should  enter  full  communion.  At  present 
the  theory,  if  there  be  one,  seems  to  be  that  it  is  not 
natural  but  is  rather  surprising  if  this  takes  place. 

In  some  such  churches  children  who  have  been  bap- 
tized or  christened  in  infancy  are  enrolled  as  infant 
members,  brought  at  a  certain  age  for  instruction 
and  then  asked  practically,  not,  "Will  you  come  into 
the  church?"  but,  "Must  you  go  out  of  the  church?'* 

In  many  churches,  principally  I  think  where  the 
children  are  largely  those  of  church  members,  tact- 
ful pastors  form  annually  these  classes  which  they  in- 
struct in  the  Christian  way,  the  use  of  the  Bible, 
prayer  and  service,  solving  doubts  and  encouraging 
good  ideals  and  practical  living,  and  as  the  result  thev 


114  'The  Boy  frohlem 

bring  almost  the   entire  company   each  season  into 
membership. 

The  Guild  of  Bible  Illuminators  is  a  modest  move- 
ment which  seems  destined  to  throw  important  light 
upon  the  matter  of  studying  the  Bible  graphically. 
The  purposes  of  the  Guild  are  these: 

1.  To  revive  the  old  art  of  letter-illuminating  for 
the  adorning  of  Bibles  and  devotional  books. 

2.  To  encourage  the  extra  illustrating  of  Bibles 
with  reproductions  of  sacred  art. 

3.  To  help  the  enrichment  of  Bibles  with  margi- 
nal quotations  and  comments. 

4.  To  discover  and  disseminate  methods  of  study- 
ing the  Bible  graphically,  by  means  of  handiwork, 
among  young  people. 

The  pioneer  of  this  sort  of  work  is  Mr.  W.  H.  Davis 
of  Brooklyn,  who  has  made  careful  and  successful  ex- 
periment with  the  boys  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association.     He  describes  his  work  as  follows: 

"For  many  years  there  have  been  Bible-reading 
courses  intended  for  boys,  but  it  is  a  very  unusual 
boy  who  will  devote  time  each  day  to  reading  a  por- 
tion of  the  Bible.  These  reading  courses  are  seldom 
of  any  value  for  the  classroom  study. 

"Boys  younger  than  ten  years  will  seldom  do  any 
work.  The  teacher  must  do  the  most  of  it.  For  boys 
eleven  years  and  upwards  the  following  courses  have 
proved  very  interesting  and  profitable: — 

"i.  'Men  of  the  Bible,'  published  by  the  Interna- 
tional  Committee,  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     115 

tion.  A  short  course  of  studies  of  Bible  heroes,  one 
lesson  devoted  to  each  hero.  In  this  course  each  boy 
makes  a  relief  map  of  paper  pulp.  He  has  been  given, 
a  week  beforehand,  a  list  of  models  which  he  makes 
at  home.  After  his  map  is  painted]  with  water-colors, 
the  models  of  tents,  altars,-  sheep,  horses,  city  walls, 
swords,  etc.,  are  put  in  the  proper  places  on  the  map. 
Fires  are  made  on  the  map  to  illustrate  the  burning 
of  cities  or  the  sacrifice  on  an  altar.  All  this  can  be 
done  in  forty-five  minutes,  and  it  is  decidedly  fun. 
During  the  map-making  the  teacher  draws  out  the 
story  of  the  hero's  life,  and  puts  on  the  blackboard 
the  lessons  suggested  by  the  boys  themselves.  Their 
memory  readily  holds  the  story  connected  with  the 
models. 

"2.     The  'Life  of  Christ,'  published  by  the  Inter 
national  Committee,  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa 
tion,  is  another  short  course  in  which  a  public-school  ^j 
method  is  adopted.     Blackboard  sketches  are  made  ' 
which  suggest  the  various  incidents  in  Christ's  life. 

"The  boys  like  to  draw  pictures  when  the  copy  has 
first  been  given  them.  By  making  their  drawings 
which  are,  of  course,  simple,  the  story  is  quickly  re- 
membered. For  instance,  the  fact  of  Jesus  working 
as  a  carpenter,  during  his  young  manhood,  is  happily 
illustrated  by  sketching  a  ham/mer,  jack-knife,  saw,  or 
Dther  carpenter's  tools. 

"The  purpose  of  this  course  is  to  teach  the  main  his- 
torical facts  of  Christ's  life  on  earth,  so  that  a  boy 
may  have  them  fixed  in  his  mind  as  permanently  as  he 


ii6  The  Boy  Problem 

does  the  facts  in  the  lives  of  Washington  and  Lincohi. 

"During  many  years'  teaching,  1  have  seldom  found 
a  boy  who  could  tell  in  what  year  and  at  what  place 
Jesus  was  born. 

"3.  'Paul,  the  Missionary'  is  another  course  which 
offers  much  interest  to  boys,  as  relief  maps  with  mod- 
els can  be  made  and  pictures  gathered  to  illustrate 
the  cities  and  events  of  his  life.  Grecian  and  Roman 
histories  may  be  freely  drawn  from  to  illustrate  this 
study.  "  .    -  . 

"4.  'Missionary  Heroes'  is  a  course  following 
'Paul  the  Missionary,'  and  offers  great  attractions, 
because  it  uses  as  its  text-books  the  biographies  of 
the  greatest  heroes  of  the  world.  Relief  maps,  globes, 
pictures,  photographs  are  of  great  help  in  this  study. 

"5.  'The  Books  of  the  Bible'  is  a  course  that  can 
be  taught  where  a  teacher  with  some  knowledge  of 
art  can  be  secured  either  to  teach  the  whole  or  to 
supplement  the  work  of  another. 

"Bibles  can  be  secured  which  have  never  been 
bound.  Then  they  are  sliced  into  sections,  and  for 
each  section  a  cover  is  designed  by  each  boy.  Be- 
sides designing  a  cover  the  student  makes  an  inside 
title-page,  which  is  a  copy  of  the  lesson  taught,  and 
gives  a  statement  of  the  contents.  On  the  cover, 
which  may  be  made  of  water-color  paper  or  other  ma- 
terial, the  boy  makes  a  design  which  will  suggest 
something  of  the  character  or  story  of  the  contents. 
For  instance,  the  books  of  Samuel,  Kings  and  Chron- 
icles naturally  are  kept  together  as  one  book,  because 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     117 

they  tell  the  story  of  the  kings.  On  the  inside  title- 
page  is  an  outline  of  the  story  of  Saul,  David,  Solo- 
mon, and  the  other  eighteen  kings  of  Judah  and  nine- 
teen kings  of  Israel,  the  names  of  the  great  prophets 
of  that  period,  and  a  few  other  important  historical 
persons,  such  as  Jonathan.  The  cover  designed  by 
one  boy  is  very  suggestive.  An  all-over  design  is 
formed  by  small  golden  scepters  at  the  intersection 
of  diagonal  lines.  In  the  center  is  a  golden  crown 
with  jewels  of  various  colors.  Inside  the  border, 
which  is  painted  royal  purple,  is  the  title,  The  Story 
of  the  Kings.'  The  boys  will  do  this  work  at  home 
with  great  delight  if  the  material  is  provided." 

I  h'ave  already  indicated  that  I  regard  this  sort  of 
work  as  most  helpful.  I  have  made  trial  of  it  myself 
with  a  very  lively  lot  of  boys  and  girls  and  have  found 
that  among  young  people  of  fourteen  it  won  instant 
interest,  which  grew  rather  than  diminished,  and  that 
it  leads  into  attractive  channels  of  work,  almost  infinite 
'n  variety.  Some  of  the  formal  courses  might  not 
seem  to  attract  those  who  are  conscious  of  possessing 
no  manual  or  artistic  skill,  yet  as  the  aim  is  not  art, 
but  knowledge  of  the  Bible,  I  find  that  a  little  judi- 
cious help  makes  it  possible  for  even  these  to  produce 
verv  fair  work.  In  the  study  of  the  books  of  the 
TJible  one  can  approach  a  boy  who  thinks  he  cares 
nothine  for  the  Bible  as  a  book,  entirely  upon  the  side 
of  his  interest  in  colors  and  brush  work,  with  the 
ndded  attraction  of  sociability.  Several  books  may  be 
summarized  and  several  covers  designed  or  all  the 


Ii8  The  Boy  Problem 

work  may  be  done  upon  one  book,  for  which  a  "Con- 
tents" or  "List  of  Characters"  or  "The  Story  of  the 
Book"  may  be  executed  by  the  boys,  small  marginal 
pictures  inserted  and  Perry  pictures  as  illustrations 
included.  -  Formal  didactics  is  unnecessary,  for  the 
books  will  be  read  and  mastered  almost  unconsciously. 
The  courses  should  be  short,  and  can  be  conducted 
an  hour  after  school,  with  the  accompaniment  of  con- 
siderable freedom  and  social  intercourse. 

The  Guild  desires  to  learn  of  experiments  and  im- 
provements in  this  direction. 

The  Church  has  other  means  of  helping  boys  which 
are  not  everywhere  recognized.  The  church  service 
itself,  the  boy  choir,  the  liturgy  where  it  is  used,  the 
sacraments,  are  used  with  wonderful  power  in  the 
Roman  and  Episcopal  churches  as  an  appeal  to  the 
imaginative  and  dramatic  instincts.  They  may  rightly 
be  so  used  in  other  communions.  Preaching  to  chil- 
dren, especially  to  adolescents,  is  the  most  beautiful 
art  and  the  most  rewarding  task  of  the  Christian  min- 
ister. The  spectacle  of  a  church  full  of  adults,  who 
have  passed  the  era  of  crisis  and  most  of  whom  have 
been  converted,  engaging  the  efforts  of  a  preacher  is 
one  of  the  most  unsatisfying  sights  on  earth.  It  is  a 
mistake  to  think  one  has  to  "preach  down  to"  adoles- 
i  cents..  The  most  virile,  noble  and  splendid  truth  is 
ithe  best  food  for  them.  The  emphasis  upon  Sunday- 
\school  attendance  as  a  substitute  for  children  is  most 
unfortunate,  since  so  manv  children  leave  the  Sunday- 
school  at  the  age  of  greatest  danger,  and,  having 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     119 

never  formed  the  habit  of  church  attendance,  pass 
from  all  church  influence.  The  Bible  Normal  College, 
when  at  Springfield,  in  its  interesting  experiment  of 
the  care  of  a  mission  church  in  that  city,  literally  put 
"the  child  in  the  midst"  by  making  the  Sunday  morn- 
ing service  one  for  children.  My  own  experience  is 
that  if  we  give  the  children  something  to  come  for, 
and  encourage  their  presence  by  simple  rewards  and 
attentions,  we  can  secure  and  sustain  the  habit.  In 
my  own  church,  one  year,  49  received  such  rewards, 
of  whom  22  were  boys.  In  response  to  many  inquiries 
as  to  the  method  I  will  say  that  the  annual  recogni- 
tion which  I  give  to  all  the  children  who  care  to  try 
for  it  is  only  a  simple  diploma  with  a  five  cent  Perry 
picture  on  the  back.  To  encourage  such  attendance 
among  children  just  beginning  to  form  the  habit  I  re- 
quire attendance  only  for  a  quarter  at  a  time.  They 
are  given  cards  dated  for  each  Sunday  with  a  space 
for  the  text,  which  are  punched  as  they  enter  the 
church.  Those  who  reach  a  certain  standard  are  the 
pastor's  guests  for  an  evening  at  the  close  of  the 
quarter. 

The  revival  appeals  especially  to  adolescence.  It 
satisfies  the  emotional  nature.  It  is  a  simple  appeal 
to  the  heart.  Take  away  the  late  hours,  the  long 
services,  the  untrained  and  fanatic  exhorters — feat- 
ures which  are  incidental — and  reduce  it  to  a  "chil- 
dren's crusade,"  in  which  the  social  and  emotional 
element  is  retained,  where  the  ideal  of  the  heroic  and 
loving  Christ  and  his   grand  and  strenuous  service 


120  The  Boy  Problem 

are  held  up  by  the  pastor  or  a  wise  speciaHst  with 
children,  and  we  have  an  instrument  of  historic  dig- 
nity and  perpetual  value.  The  danger  is  the  forcing  of 
the  nature  before  it  has  come  to  its  day  of  choice  and 
the  neglect  to  follow  up  the  decision  by  careful  train- 
ing. 

A  plan  which  is  being  very  strongly  pressed  in  Sun- 
day-school circles  is  that  of  Decision  Day,  a  set  day 
for  securing  or  registering  decisions  of  the  adolescent 
children  to  follow  Christ.  A  desire  for  "results,"  nat- 
ural and  often  proper,  seeks  definite  harvests  after  a 
long  season  of  toil.  The  appointing  of  a  State  De- 
cision Day  and  tabulating  the  totals  from  the  day 
smacks,  however,  of  loving  children  statistically.  A 
person  wonders  if  year  books  did  not  exist  if  the  plan 
would  ever  have  been  thought  of.  The  ease  with 
which  great  numbers  are  secured  starts  the  natural 
inquiry  whether  this  is  not  another  "short  cut"  which 
will  prove  disappointing  in  the  end.  Does  this  new 
method,  which  works  so  uniformly  that  it  ought  al- 
most to  be  patented,  produce  other  than  mechanical 
"results"? 

I  have  tried  the  plan  very  carefully  for  three  con- 
secutive years  and  have  sought  earnestly  to  learn  in 
my  own  and  other  fields  what  is  the  real  outcome. 
The  method  used  at  its  best  seems  to  me  to  be  this: 
The  aim  is  not  to  get  great  accessions  to  the  church 
but  to  give  to  those  who  are  passing  through  the 
psychical  crisis  the  gentle  shock  that  shall  discover 
the  child-soul  to  itself  and  help  it  into  the  kingdom. 


Organizations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     121 

The  time  to  try  the  plan  is  just  when  this  shock  seems 
needed,  and  not  in  order  to  "swing  into  Hne"  nor  to 
be  simultaneous  with  anybody  else.  It  may  be  done 
yearly  or  once  in  three  years  or  twice  a  year,  accord- 
ing to  the  spiritual  atmosphere.  The  plan  should  not 
be  announced  to  the  scholars  much  beforehand,  but 
should  be  carefully  prepared  for  with  the  teachers  and 
parents.  The  present  purpose  is  to  secure  the  quiet 
committal  of  a  group  of  scholars  to  Christ  with  the 
immediate  enrolment  of  them  in  a  pastor's  class.  In 
some  schools  the  call  is  so  framed  as  to  secure  a  state- 
ment of  the  religious  attitude  of  every  member  of  the 
school,  thus  making  a  complete  religious  census. 
Usually,  however,  the  plan  involves  a  card  to  be 
signed  stating  a  purpose,  for  example  "to  live  the 
Christian  life  of  love  and  service."  I  used  a  card  to  be 
signed  in  dupHcate  and  witnessed  by  the  parent,  one- 
half  being  retained  by  the  child  and  half  by  the  pas- 
tor. I  also  required,  to  avoid  thoughtless  action,  that 
the  signing  be  done  at  home  and  in  ink.  The  best 
way  to  secure  wise  signing  is  to  make  the  teachers 
evangelists  in  their  own  little  parishes.  The  whole- 
sale signing  of  refusing  to  sign  by  a  class  is  a  symp- 
tom so  common  that  it  was  what  first  led  me  to  dis- 
count the  method. 

The  way  the  plan  works  is  this :— A  startlingly  large 
number  always  sign,  invariably  nearly  a  third.  Chil- 
dren like  to  sign  papers.  It  is  a  disease  nowadays. 
Many  adults  have  it.  The  first  occasion  is  always  im- 
pressive.   The  minister  probably  sends  word  the  fol- 


122  The  Boy  Problem 

lowing  Monday  to  his  denominational  weekly  that  he 
has  75  "converts."  He  has  no  such  thing.  What  he 
really  has  is  hard  to  state.  Sometimes  a  good  many 
join  the  pastor's  class,  oftener,  I  think,  but  few.  The 
church  roll  is  not  materially  affected  unless  these  are 
very  carelessly  rushed  into  the  church.  In  one  warmly 
evangelistic  church  two  years  ago  115  cards  were 
signed.  Of  these  20  have  since  joined  the  church. 
In  another  out  of  74  three  years  ago  there  are  4.  In 
another  out  of  131  there  are  36.  These  "results"  con- 
vince me  that  the  numbers  should  never  be  announced. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose,  on  tTie  other 
hand,  that  nothing  has  been  accompHshed.  The  ma- 
jority mean  what  they  say.  The  Endeavor  Society 
shows  the  impulse  at  once.  Some  clear  cases  of  new 
moral  motive  are  seen.  This  advantage  is  seen  at 
once:  a  large  number,  among  them  some  hitherto  un- 
suspected of  religious  feeling,  make  a  committal 
which  opens  the  way  for  personal  conversation.  Some 
other  facts  are  noteworthy.  Parents  are  apt  to  be 
incredulous  of  the  plan.  They  think  their  child  "is 
not  quite  ready  yet."  This  may  betoken  ignorance  or 
an  instinctive  protection  of  a  sensitive,  immature  soul 
from  rough  hands.  The  second  and  third  trials  are 
not  as  impressive  or  fruitful  as  the  first. 

The  important  ones  to  regard  are  really  not  those 
who  sign  but  those  who  refrain.  What  of  them? 
There  are  certain  temperaments  who  refuse  to  ex- 
press themselves.  They  may  be  obstinate  or  timid. 
This  is  true :  boys  and  girls  will  sign  freely  up  to  a  cer- 


Organisations  Formed  for  Boys  by  Adults     123 

tain  year — about  14 — and  then  they  will  abruptly  drop 
off.  After  18  or  so  the  signing  is  resumed.  Those 
seem  to  be  the~  years  of  reserve.  Then  there  is  the 
leakage,  the  waste,  the  possible  alienation.  When 
115  signed  over  300  refused  to  sign.  Is  it  not  possible 
that  these  300  believe  that  they  have  thus  disowned 
Christ?  It  seemed  a  daring  act — but  the  heavens  did 
not  fall  nor  the  lightning  strike — next  year  it  becomes 
easier  to  refrain.  Is  it  wholesome  thus  to  lead  young 
souls  up  to  the  great  alternative  and  let  the  will  fail, 
and  do  it  year  after  year?  One  pastor  aVoids  this  by 
providing  no  cards  and  making  the  call  only  a  great 
w^elcome.  Others  carefully  explain  that  it  is  hoped 
and  believed  that  all  desire  to  belong  to  Christ  and 
that  the  day  is  simply  the  opportunity  for  those  who 
are  ready  to  make  the  gift  (the  Easter  gift,  if  it  is  that 
season)  of  themselves  to  God. 

I  trust  that  this  discussion  will  lead  to  thoughtful 
study  as  to  whether  the  plan  is  applicable  in  each 
one's  own  place,  for  that  is  the  real  criterion.  Let  the 
values  be  balanced,  the  conditions  studied,  the  way 
life  really  grows  be  traced,  the  plan  used  with  care,  if 
at  all,  and  the  returns  made  simply  a  guidance  to  lov- 
ing personal  work. 


SOME   SUGGESTIONS   AS   TO   HOW   TO 
HELP    BOYS 

The  preceding  chapters  may  be  summarized  in  the 
following  statement  of  principles  for  work  with  boys : 

1.  Importance  of  the  Period.  The  last  nascencies 
of  the  instincts,  the  completion  of  the  habits,  the  psy- 
chical crisis,  the  infancy  of  the  wdll,  the  birth  of  the 
social  nature,  the  disparity  between  the  passions  and 
appetites  and  the  judgment  and  self-control,  and  the 
fact  that,  for  normal  and  abnormal  boys  alike,  this 
is  the  close  of  the  plastic  age,  make  this  the  most 
critical  period  of  life,  and  one  which  should  converge 
upon  itself  the  wisest  and  strongest  social  and  moral 
influences. 

2.  Necessity  of  Study  of  Adolesence.  The  change- 
ableness,  secretiveness  and  infinite  variety  of  boys  at 
this  period  makes  necessary  not  only  a  study  of  the 
generalizations  of  psychology  but -an;  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  the  antecedents,  surroundings  and  influences 
of  each  boy  who  is  under  care  and  guidance. 

3.  What  Boys  Like.  Social  companionship  of 
neighborhood  groups  of  boys  of  their  own  age  chiefly 
for  physical  activities. 

4.  What  Boys  Need.  Nutrition,  exercise,  whole- 
some environment,  guarded  organization,  arousement 
of  self-activity,  teaching  by  interest,  will-training  by 


Suggestions   as   to   Hozv   to    Help   Boys       125 

self-originative  muscular  activity,  and  handiwork, 
something  to  love,  something  to  know,  something  to 
do  constantly,  "reUgion  of  a  physical  nature  if  that  is 
possible."  As  to  organization,  the  esprit  de  corps  of 
numbers,  but  the  personal  dealing  with  smaller 
groups,  where  possible.  As  to  teaching,  keeping  a 
little  in  advance  of  the  boy,  without  becoming  unnat- 
ural. The  chief  requirements  of  the  leader:  powers 
of  observation,  collation  and  reasoning,  persistence, 
firmness,  justice,  self-mastery  and  self-adjustment, 
lar^e-mindedness  and  large-heartedness,  and  above 
all  childlikeness  ('It  is  harder  to  become  a  child  than 
to  be  one" — William  Newton  Clarke). 

These  statements  lead  to  an  inquiry  as  to  the  in- 
strumentalities at  our  service. 

The  greatest  means  of  helping  the  boy  is  the  Home. 
I  have  not  emphasized  this  because  we  have  been 
talking  of  other  things.  But  the  one  thing  that  dis- 
courages the  social  worker  for  boys  is  the  recognition 
that  the  divinely  appointed  institution,  which  has  the 
most  of  the  boy's  time,  interest  and  loyalty  and  every 
needed  inspiration  and  appliance  for  his  nurture,  is 
untrue  to  its  duty,  and  that  nothing  else  -can  possibly 
take  its  place.  Not  only  are  children  God's  ambassa- 
dors to  earth's  homes,  but  it  is  the  personality  of  the 
mother  that  originates  in  the  child  the  earliest  and  the 
most  prominent  ideas  of  God.  When  a  boy  arrives 
at  adolescence  he  turns  from  his  mother  to  his  father. 
That  law-giving  deity  of  the  early  years  is  now  a  peer, 
a  companion  and  a  sympathizer.    The  boyhood  of  the 


126  The  Boy  Problem 

father  is  the  hero  of  the  son,  and  it  is  almost  impossi- 
ble, as  it  seems  ungracious,  to  provide  substitutes  for 
the  ethical  teaching  and  practice  of  the  home.  "In 
Sparta  when  a  boy  committed  a  crime  his  father  was 
punished."  The  influences  that  disrupt  the  home  and 
prevent  its  members  from  ever  being  together  are 
most  dangerous,  not  in  their  influence  upon  the  pa- 
rents, but  upon  the  child.  It  is  the  evening  lamp  that 
is  home's  Hghthouse.  A  home  without  a  good  even- 
time  is  a  home  without  hope,  and  the  way  a  boy's  day 
ends  at  home  is  a  prophecy  of  the  way  his  life  will 
end.  The  hour  after  sunset  is  the  Sabbath  of  the  day. 
It  seems,  too,  as  if  the  very  years  of  crisis  were  those 
most  neglected.  Many  parents  to-day  are  like 
cuckoos,  willing  to  leave  their  young  in  anybody 
else's  nest.  Professor  F.  G.  Peabody  has  pointed  out 
that  the  modern  boarding-school  and  summer-camp 
system  for  well-to-do  boys  is  really  a  **placing-out 
system,"  analogous  to  that  applied  to  poor  orphan 
and  neglected  children.  Especially  do  parents  seem 
willing  to  trust  their  religious  nurture  to  those  who 
may  be  willing  to  take  up  the  task  of  saving  other 
people's  children. 

While  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  home  can  fully 
express  all  of  a  boy's  vitality  and  interests  beyond  a 
certain  age,  many  boys  could  be  carried  through  the 
age  of  unrest  without  resort  to  outside  agencies. 
When  the  "gang"  spirit  appears,the  parent  can  coop- 
erate with  it,  rather  than  obstruct  it.  Jacob  Riis  tells 
how  his  wife  met  such  a  case  of  apparently  dangerous 
conniving : 


Suggestions  as   to  How   to   Help  Boys      127 

''My  wife  discovered  the  conspiracy,  and,  with 
woman's  wit,  defeated  it  by  joining  the  gang.  She 
'gave  in  wood'  to  the  election  bonfires,  and  pulled  the 
safety-valve  upon  all  the  other  plots  by  entering  into 
the  true  spirit  of  them, — which  was  adventure  rather 
than  mischief, — and  so  keeping  them  within  safe  lines. 
She  was  elected  an  honorary  member,  and  became  the 
counsellor  of  the  gang  in  all  their  little  scrapes.  I 
can  yet  see  her  dear  brow  wrinkled  in  the  study  of 
some  knotty  gang  problem  which  we  discussed  when 
the  boys  had  been  long  asleep.  They  did  not  dream 
of  it,  and  the  village  never  knew  what  small  tragedies 
it  escaped,  nor  who  it  was  that  so  skilfully  averted 
them." 

The  happiest  memory  of  my  own  boyhood — in  a 
place  where  the  neighborhood  spirit  was  yet  warm — 
was  of  the  weekly  evening  gatherings  in  the  various 
homes  in  turn,  with  the  elders  conversing  at  one  end  of 
the  room  and  we  youngsters  playing  games  and  act- 
ing plays  and  charades  at  the  other.  I  do  not  remem- 
ber that  any  of  usi  ever  cared  to  be  anywhere  else  at; 
night.  The  story  of  the  Alcott  family  is  another  en-| 
trancing  illustration  of  what  I  mean.  No  doubt  the/ 
boys'  club  that  meets  in  a  home  attic  or  kitchen  is  the 
best  type  in  the  world.  The  curfew  ordinance  has 
at  least  the  advantage  of  making  it  necessary  for  the 
parent  to  keep  the  child  in  the  home  evenings. 

Next  to  the  evenings,  Sundays  are  the  times  of  the 
greatest  opportunity  in  the  home.  I  know  how  hard 
it  is  to  abbreviate  the  afternoon  nap  for  the  sake  of 


128  The  Boy  Problem 

the  boy,  but  it  will  be  better  to  do  so  now  than  to  be 
aw^ake  with  anxiety  later.  ^  This  day  is  in  many  a  home 
the  only  opportunity  ever  open  for  what  I  conceive  to 
be  essential  to  an  adolescent  boy,  a  walk  with  his 
father  alone,  j  The  Junior  Endeavor  movement  has 
kindly  taken  the  burden  of  Sunday  afternoon  from 
many  a  parent,  and  has  thereby  done  a  wrong  to  nat- 
ure, to  the  home,  to  the  Sabbath  and  to  both  parent 
and  child.       The  dumping  of  children  into  Sunday-    , 
schools   that  their  parents   may   go   off   Sundays  is    1 
heathenish  and  abominable.    It  is  also  a  question  how  ^ 
far  any  outsider  has  the  right  to  encourage  religious 
feehng  in  a  child  without  the  knowledge  of  its  pa- 
rents.    The  extent  to  which  parents  have  abdicated 
their  priestly  office  is  seen  in  the  testimony  of  several 
pastors  that  when  they  sent  invitations  to  their  com- 
munion classes  to  the  children,  through  the  parents, 
as  was  proper,  the  children  would  not  come  because 
they  were  not  invited  directly  and  the  parents  made 
no  response  at  all ! 

If  the  period  of  habit-making  has  been  passed 
wisely  in  a  simple,  consistent,  pious  home  life  the 
period  of  will-training  will  present  fewer  difficulties,  i 
I  cannot  emphasize  too  much  in  the  matter  of  v/ill- 
training  the  advantages  of  the  country  home.  The 
good  will  is  there  more  easily  fostered  because  the 
boy  is  from  the  start  an  active  member  of  the  firm. 
City  households  that  are  able  to  emigrate  bodily  to 
the  country  solve  half  the  difficulties  of  restless  child- 
hood and  store  up  material  for  w'inter  nourishment 


Suggestions   as   to   How   to    Help   Boys       129 

and  exercise.  The  country  week  and  the  vacation 
school  and  the  summer  camp  do  the  same  thing  in  a 
lesser  degree. 

With  all  the  space  I  have  given  to  the  description 
of  social  agencies  I  am  in  heartiest  agreement  with 
the  Rev.  Parris  T.  Farwell,  when,  speaking  of  church 
organizations  for  children,  he  says:  "We  need  to-day, 
not  more  work  in  the  church  for  children,  more  infant 
classes,  catechetical  classes  and  Junior  Endeavor  so-/ 
cieties,  but  more  work  for  the  homes  of  our  people.| 
We  need  a  deeper,  holier,  sublimer  conception  of  the 
family,  its  relationships,  duties  and  opportunities.  We 
need  more  faithful  parents.  In  this  respect  we  are 
growing  worse  rather  than  better.  And  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  our  church  organizations  for  children  are 
helping  this  downward  movement.  More  and  more 
the  home  is  handing  over  its  function  as  a  school  for 
the  child  to  outside  institutions  which  are  absolutely 
incapable  of  doing  the  work  as  it  should  be  done. 
These  institutions  are  better  than  none  for  children 
who  come  from  unchristian  homes,  but  they  never 
can  fill  the  place  which  the  father  and  mother  should 
fill  in  training  their  children  for  Christ.  I  know  of  no 
weightier  problem  for  the  Church  to  solve  than  that 
of  restoring  to  the  home,  in  the  face  of  the  material- 
ism of  the  age  and  the  industrial  system  under  which 
we  live,  the  religious  life  which  belongs  to  the  home 
and  which  alone  can  keep  it  sacred.  This  I  consider 
to  be  the  indispensable  factor  in  true  preparation  of 
children  for  Christ's  service.     Other  things  which  we 


130  TJic   Boy   Problem 

are  undertaking,  and  which  it  is  wise  to  undertake,  in 
children's  organizations,  should  be  supplementary. 
At  present  they  are  too  often  makeshifts,  taking  the 
place  which  does  not  belong  to  them." 

Next  to  the  home  we  must  place  instrumentalities 
that  are  homelike.    Celia  Thaxter  told  of 

"The  gracious  hollow  that  God  made 
In  every  human  shoulder,  where  he  meant 
Some  tired  heart  for  comfort  should  be  laid." 

God  destined  some  people  to'be  parents.  Others  he 
left  for  god-parents.  That  old  chrismal  idea  needs 
to  be  revived.  Many  an  empty  heart  could  be  filled 
with  lad's-love.  There  are  great  houses  which  are 
silent  that  could  be  filled  with  wondering  children; 
and  unsatisfied  cultured  lives  that  could  be  poured 
out  in  no  finer  crusade  than  to  give  a  few  boys  a  place 
that  has  the  home-touch  once  or  twice  a  week.  Some 
Sunday-school  teachers  have  thus  brought  the  school 
into  that  contact  with  life  whose  lack  we  mourned  in 
our  last  chapter.  Many  a  college  graduate — like  the 
boys'  athletic  hero,  Evart  Jansen  Wendell,  or  some 
girl  from  Smith  or  Vassar — has  done  the  same. 
Among  the  well  planned  ways  of  helping  children  and 
\  helping  their  homes  at  the  same  time  I  think  the  best 
1  is  the  Home  Library  System  with  its  circulating  game 
j  and  picture  adjuncts. 

Next  we  have  the  public  school.     I  cannot  speak 

of  this  at  length.     Its  progressiveness  is  the  admira- 

\   tion  of  us  all.    Once  there  was  no  training  but  liter- 


Suggestions   as   to   How   to   Help   Boys      131 

ary  training.  To-day  five  kinds  of  instruction  are 
recognized:  training  of  the  body,  training  of  the 
senses,  training  of  the  mind,  training  of  the  will,  and 
training  of  the  moral  nature.  Of  all  advances  in  edu- 
cation I  look  with  most  hope  upon  manual  training, 
for  educational  rather  than  industrial  ends,  especially 
for  its  influence  in  will-training  and  moral  training. 
"Manual  Training,"  says  Professor  C.  H.  Henderson, 
"is  not  practically  or  theoretically  a  school  to  merely 
train  the  hands,  to  make  boys  useful  about  the  house, 
to  supply  the  world  with  artisans,  to  take  the  place  of 
a  dead  apprentice  system,  or  to  meet  in  education  the 
demands  of  an  industrial  age.  Its  true  end  is  thei 
major  end,  the  attainment  of  the  complete  life,  the  un-| 
folding  and  perfecting  of  the  human  spirit."  Manual! 
training  arouses  the  latent  interests,  and  if  the  scheme 
be  humanized  rather  than  mechanical,  teaches  pa- 
tience, accuracy  and  honesty,  dignifies  the  hand,  de- 
velops the  self-originative  powers  and  discovers  the 
life  mission.  There  are  evidently  to  be  Very  soon  in 
our  schools  some  very  radical  rearrangements  of  our 
curriculum  and  a  postponement  and  curtailment  of 
seat  work  and  home  work.  But  the  point  which  most 
interests  us  is  as  to  what  part  the  school  of  the  future 
is  to  play  in  moral  training.  Miss  Margaret  J.  Evans, 
Dean  of  Carleton  College,  has  been  speaking  earnest- 
ly upon  this  matter.  She  points  out  that  while  "the 
standard  of  honesty  and  truthfulness  is  much  higher 
among  pupils  than  among  those  not  attending 
school,"  "pupils  who  go  from  the  schools  to  business 


132  The   Boy   Problem 

are  not  established  in  the  moral  principles  which  they    - 
especially  need,  and  there  is  little  hope  of  their  ac- 
quiring these  principles  in  business."     She  says  that 
the  means  for  moral  training  in  our  schools  are  four: 

"i.     Systematic,  required  instruction. 

"2.  The  personal  influence  of  the  teacher,  with  in- 
cidental teaching  in  connection  with  the  ordinary  les- 
son. 

*'3.     School  discipline  in  general. 

"4.  Public  sentiment  within  and  without  the 
school." 

She  states  that  moral  instruction  is  required  in  but 
four  or  five  states,  and  this  not  regularly  or  definitely. 
"A  subject  which  is  not  in  the  curriculum,  which  has 
no  time  set  or  allowed  for  it,  which  no  one  asks  about, 
and  which  has  no  methods  of  teaching  prescribed, 
cannot  secure  from  too  busy,  always  hurried  teachers, 
much  attention."  About  the  only  formal  teaching  ^, 
that  is  ethical  is  about  temperance,  a  minor  virtue,  ) 
taught  usually  as  a  prohibition.  She  makes  hearty 
acknowledgment  to  the  character  of  teachers  and  the 
excellence  of  school  discipline  as  far  as  it  goes.  The 
emphasis  upon  patriotic  days  and  heroic  national  fig- 
ures, so  elaborate  as  almost  to  create  a  religion  of 
country-worship,  fine  literature,  the  moral  effect  of 
doing  one's  work  well,  the  enlarging  influence  of  the 
subjects  of  study,  the  impress  of  Wonder  upon  the 
child's  life,  constant  association  with  a  refined  per- 
sonality in  cheerful,  orderly,  stimulating  and  inform- 
ing  employment — these   are    truly   moral   forces   of 


Suggestions   as   to  How   to   Help  Boys      133 

great  power.  But  outside  the  school  are  their  oppo- 
sites,  disorder,  bad  associates,  vile  literature,  and  a 
public  sentiment  which,  whether  expressed  in  litera- 
ture or  life,  is  neither  reliable  nor  uniformly  uplift- 
ing. It  is  Miss  Evans'  beHef  that  we  must  fight  the 
real  battle  for  honesty  and  morality  in  the  schools. 
By  the  training  of  the  will  and  by  systematic,  required 
-instruction  in  the  first  laws  of  morals,  "based  on  the 
'ought,'  whose  authority  all  acknowledge,  even  when 
opinions  differ  as  to  its  origin,"  together  with  added 
emphasis  upon  all  other  instrumentalities  which  we 
have  at  present,  it  is  her  conviction  that  this  desired 
end  must  be  attained. 

A  clipping  has  come  to  my  attention  which  de- 
scribes the  first  graded  attempt  in  this  direction  of 
which  I  have  learned. 

"Ethical  teaching  has  been  made  systematic  in  the 
schools  of  Anderson,  Ind.,  where  the  school  board  has 
adopted  a  course  reaching  from  the  primary  grade  to 
the  high  school.  Children  in  the  first  grade  are  ad- 
monished to  be  obedient  to  parents  and  teachers,  to 
be  kind  to  their  playmates,  and  to  be  willing  to  share 
their  toys  with  others.  Truthfulness  is  inculcated  in 
the  second  grade,  as  also  love  of  home,  kindness  to 
animals,  cleanliness  in  person  and  dress,  and  the  culti- 
vation of  a  pleasant  manner.  In  a  step  higher  cheer- 
fulness and  honesty  are  emphasized,  as  also  good 
habits,  love  of  the  flag,  and  respect  for  parents,  teach- 
ers, strangers  and  old  people.  Self-respect,  as  also 
respect  for  the  rights  and  privileges  of  others,  and  po- 


134  The   Boy  Problem 

liteness  are  the  ethical  subjects  in  the  fourth  grade. 
Here,  also,  the  children  are  instructed  as  to  some  of 
their  rights  and  privileges.  Industry,  its  necessity, 
its  benefits  and  its  rewards;  promptness,  economy, 
justice  and  mercy  are  the  subjects  in  the  fifth  grade. 
These  are  elaborated  in  the  sixth  grade,  where  also 
the  children  are  admonished  to  be  unselfish,  and  to 
have  a  proper  reverence  for  God,  for  those  in  author- 
ity and  for  the  aged. 

"These  ethical  teachings  broaden  in  the  seventh 
grade,  where  instruction  is  given  in  the  practical 
duties  of  citizenship.  There  the  children  are  taught 
respect  for  and  obedience  to  law;  property  rights,  in- 
cluding, of  course,  regard  for  the  property  of  others; 
the  duty  of  the  strong  to  the  weak,  and  temperance. 
In  the  eighth  grade  talks  are  given  on  political  and  re- 
ligious freedom,  on  how  patriotism  should  be  ex- 
hibited, on  true  manhood  and  true  womanhood,  and 
on  the  ideal  family.  The  system  fitly  closes  in  the 
high  school  with  lectures  on  duty — duty  to  the  family, 
to  society,  to  the  State,  to  self  and  to  God.  These  va- 
rious topics  throughout  the  school  course  are  illus- 
trated by  examples  from  life,  and  are  made  interesting 
by  appropriate  literary  selections.  This  is  thought  to 
be  the  first  attempt  at  a  complete  system  of  ethical 
teaching  for  the  public  schools."  It  is  in  this  same 
wide-awake  community  that  educational  summer  pil- 
grimages of  teachers  and  pupils  to  distant  historic 
sites,  after  the  custom  common  on  the  Continent, 
^vere  inaugurated.     The  Cleveland  Y.  M.  C.  A.  has 


Suggestions   as   to   How   to    Help   Boys       135 

for  several  seasons  done  the  same  thing  in  its  boys' 
department. 

Some  recent  evidences  of  the  way  the  public  school 
is  invading  personal  and  home  life  are  suggesting  that 
the  life  of  the  community,  both  social  and  moral,  is  to 
center  more  and  more  in  the  schoolhouse.  We  al- 
ready have  ''home  work,"  reception  days  to  parents 
and  parents'  conferences,  school  dances  and  excur- 
sions. Now  efforts  are  making  to  use  schoolhouses 
in  great  cities  for  workingmen's  clubs  as  they  are  al- 
ready being  opened  in  New  York  City  for  clubs  for 
street  boys.  In  Boston  they  are  asking  that  licenses 
for  newsboys  be  granted  by  the  school  board  instead 
of  by  the  aldermen.  To  some  this  tendency  may  seem 
secularizing  and  institutionalizing  and  likely  to  sup- 
plant the  Church.  To  others  it  will  seem  hopeful  as 
bringing  to  pass  things  by  support  of  pubHc  funds  and 
under  trained  management  which  would  otherwise  be 
feebly  and  poorly  accomplished. 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  to  name  and  discuss 
briefly  some  of  the  more  important  of  the  many  spe- 
cial methods  which,  in  community  and  church  clubs,' 
have  been  found  helpful  with  boys.  The  individual 
worker  may  be  hampered  by  circumstances  from  us- 
ing them  all,  but  so  rich  and  impressible  is  boy-nature 
that  it  seems  wise  to  utilize  as  many  asr possible. 
'  Games  and  Play.  In  my  first  chapter  I  made  strong 
emphasis  upon  the  place  of  play  in  child-life.  I  even 
intimated  that  it  was  what  childhood  was  made  for. 
This  was  the  idea  of  Groos  who  said  that  it  is  not 


^. 


136  The   Boy   Problem 

true  that  animals  and  children  play  because  they  are 
young;  they  are  young  because  they  need  to  play. 
Jean  Paul  said:  "Play  is  the  first  poetry  of  the  human 
being."  "The  essence  of  '  play,"  says  Hamilton 
Wright  Mabie,  "is  the  conscious  overflow  of  life  that 
escapes  in  perfect  self-forgetfulness."  Another  says 
that  "play  is  joyous  because  it  satisfies  the  highest 
function  of  which  the  child  is  capable."  A  different 
statement  of  the  same  thought  is  made  by  John  M. 
Pierce  when  he  says,  "What  gives  zest  to  a  game  is 
the  story  in  it."  This  relation  of  the  imagination  to 
the  physical  expenditures  is  so  close  that  it  is  not  a 
joke  but  an  actual  fact  that  a  boy  becomes  more  tired 
sawing  wood  than  in  the  much  more  violent  exercise 
of  playing  ball.  Naturally,  the  importance  of  play  in 
education  is  being  studied.  It  is  remembered  that 
he  Greeks  made  the  games  and  play  of  their  children 
an  integral  part  of  their  education.  It  is  remembered 
that  a  thousand  years  ago  our  Norse  ancestors  taught 
every  child  of  noble  birth  to  do  eight  things:  to  ride, 
to  swim,  to  steer,  to  skate,  to  throw  the  javelin,  to 
play  chess,  to  play  the  harp,  to  compose  verses.  Dr. 
D.  G.  Brinton  is  thus  led  to  say:  "The  measure  of 
value  of  work  is  the  amount  of  play  there  is  in  it,  and 
the  measure  of  value  of  play  is  the  amount  of  work 
there  is  in  it." 

Mr.  George  E.  Johnson  is  the  one  who  has  made 
the  most  careful  study  of  and  practice  with  play  in 
education.  He  urges  that  "for  school  children  should 
be  chosen,  as  far  as  possible,  the  games  which  are 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys       1^7 

1  based)  oa-iDLStinctive  tendencies.  On  the  hunting  in- 
stinct may  be  based  games  of  chase,  games  of  search- 
ing or  hunting,  games  of  hurhng  or  throwing;  on  the 
fighting  instinct,  games  of  contest,  as  wrestUng,  box- 
ing, triak  of  strength;  on  emulation,  as  jumping,  rac- 
ing, trials  of  skill ;  on  curiosity,  parlor  magic,  riddles ; 
on  sociability,  the  social  games;  on  acquisitiveness, 
collections;  on  constructiveness,  wood-work,  sewing, 
making  toys,  doll-dresses;  on  the  caring  instinct, 
dolls,  pets." 

The  purpose  of  choosing  games  should  be,  he  says : 

"i.  To  stimulate  a  healthy  play  interest  and  edu- 
cate it. 

"2.  To  play  games  adapted  to  exercise  certain  fac- 
ulties of  the  mind  and  body. 

"3.  To  teach  games  which  may  be  played  at 
home." 

On  pages  143  and  144  I  describe  Professor  Burr's 
plan  for  coordinating  stories  with  play. 

While  it  is  a  matter  of  experience  that  games  teach- 
ing observation,  memory,  attention,  and  furnishing 
physical  activity  are  quite  numerous,  indoor  social 
games  which  can  engage  a  large  social  group  are  very 
few.  He  would  be  a  benefactor  to  childhood  who 
would  present  even  one  good  one.  This  is  especially 
true  of  games  enjoyable  by  older  boys  and  girls. 

Gymnasiums.     The  gymnasium  is  instanctly  attrac- 

/^ive  to  a  boy.    He  sees  in  the  ropes  and  bars  and  chest 

/       weights  the  vision  of  himself  as  an  athlete  and  a  vic- 

\      tor.    I  do  not  think  the  gymnasium  as  mere  physical 


138  The   Boy   Problem 

exercise  appeals  to  a  boy.     It  gives  him  nothing  to 
anticipate  or  to  remember.    I  think  it  is  to  the  comr 

■^  bative^aiui^mukitivje.  nature  that  it  appeals.  For 
these  reasons  the  gymnasium  should  be  controlled  by 
the  play  interest.    And  as  it  is  this  interest  that  domi- 

"  nates,  those  boy-leaders  who  have  no  gymnasium  can 
get  along  without  it  if  the  play-interest  in  physical 
activity  can  fmd  some  other  room  for  exercise. 

Handnvork.  This  is  the  reason  why  hand-training 
is  commended.  It  gives  the  boy  more  than  the  gym- 
nasium and  it  appeals  to  more  instincts.  The  trained 
hand  opens  the  door  of  shop  and  laboratory.  It  not 
only  is  the  chief  means  of  will-training  but  it  leads  to 
the  discovery  of  adaptabilities  of  life,  it  opens  the  way 
to  specific  usefulness,  it  solves  the  question  of  the  Hfe 
tendencies,  it  develops  the  expressing  man,  and  the  in- 
terest it  excites  leaves  no  room  for  crime,  sdf-indul- 
gence  or  mischief. 

Wood-work  would  naturally  suggest  itself  as  the 
easiest  and  least  expensive  form  of  handiwork,  as  well 
as  the  most  varied  in  result.  Elaborate  equipment  or 
salaried  teachers  are  not  indispensable.  With  a  good 
old  carpenter  and  the  boys'  own  jack-knives  I  kept 
thirty  of  them  happy  one  winter.  It  is  very  easy  to 
let  the  hobby  of  utilitarianism  and  the  desire  to  make 
pretty  things  to  photograph  for  the  annual  report  run 
away   with    the   handiwork   method.      The   purpose! 

\  should  be,  I  take  it,  not  to  make  artisans  but  man-' 

\  hood,  not  hand-agility  but  will-power.  For  this  pur- 
pose I  know  nothing  better  than  to  plan  some  co- 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        139 

operative  task,  such  as  the  beautiful  achievement  of 
Miss  Mackintire's  ''Captains"  in  making  an  "Inas- 
much" motto  for  the  Labrador  hospital,  or  an  enter- 
tainment, Hke  "Hiawatha,"  for  which  weapons  and 
costumes  shall  be  contrived  by  the  boys  themselves. 
What  is  done  should  be  worth  doing  and  be  well  done. 
This  faculty  for  mechanical  and  individual  efficiency 
has  been  almost  lost  to-day  in  the  differentiation  of 
labor. 

Collections.  Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall  found  some  years 
ago  that  of  229  Boston  schoolboys  only  19  had  no  col- 
lections. A  recent  study  of  children's  collecting 
shows  that  the  fever  begins  at  about  6,  rages  from  8 
to  II,  is  at  its  height  at  10,  and,  among  boys,  lessens 
after  14.  Of  things  collected  the  following  general 
classes  exist : 

Cigar  pictures,  and  stamps,  34  per  cent. 

Objects  from  nature,  32  per  cent. 

Playthings,  1 1  per  cent. 

Miscellaneous,  mostly  trivial,  8  per  cent. 

Pictures,  6  per  cent. 

Historical,  3  per  cent. 

Literary,  2  per  cent. 

The  rage  for  stamps  is  from  9  to  1 1  and  for  cigar 
and  cigarette  pictures  from  11  to  12.  Among  the 
prominent  single  objects  gathered,  besides  those  al- 
ready mentioned,  are :  marbles,  advertising  cards, 
books,  rocks,  shells,  war  relics,  buttons,  badges. 

While  local  opportunities  vary,  these  facts  would 
furnish  suggestion  as  to  the  directions  of  probable  in- 


140  The   Boy  Problem 

terest.  It  will  add  much  to  the  value  of  the.proqess 
if  the  apparatus  used,  such  as  aquaria,  cages,  ^ower- 
presses,  scrap-books,  be  made  by  the  boys  themselves. 
Camps,  tours  and  vacation  philanthropies.  Great  as 
are  the  advantages  to  health  and  recuperation  of  giv- 
ing city  boys  country  air,  the  chief  advantage  seems 
to  be  that  the  country  is  a  boy's  own  home-land. 
Here  only  are  the  instincts  of  his  life  satisfied,  and 
here  only  can  he  rightly  develop  the  more  elementary 
virtues  which  we  call  the  "savage"  ones.  Mr.  E.  M. 
Robinson  in , his  excellent  study  of  boys'  camps  says: 
"The  rowing,  the  swimming,  the  games  and  athletics, 
the  plain  food  and  fresh  air,  the  freedom  of  dress  and 
action,  the  enduring  of  trifling  inconvenience,  and  the 
running  of  trifling  risks,  the  touch  with  nature  in 
storm  and  calm,  the  looking  out  for  one's  self,  the  ex- 
ercise of  one's  judgment,  the  following  of  the  leading 
spirits  of  the  camp,  and  the  leading  of  the  following 
spirits,  and  a  hundred  and  one  other  things,  all  tend 
jito  make  the  camp  a  place  where  the  boy  will  develop 
i  those  savage  virtues  which  are  the  admiration  of  boy- 
j>  hood.  .  .  .  Every  tendency  of  the  camp  is  to  de- 
f  Velop  the  manly  side  of  his  nature,  and  to  make  him 
[i  despise  and  rise  above  all  that  is  weak  and  effeminate." 
The  enjoyment  of  uncomfortableness,  the  desire  to  be 
on  the  water  and  in  the  water  and  close  to  a  body  of 
water,  to  be  in  the  sand,  to  stay  out  all  night,  to  sleep 
on  the  ground,  to  bury  one's  self  in  the  sand,  to  watch 
the  camp-fire,  to  brood  over  the  waves  and  the  stars, 
the  devotion  to  the  camp  leader,  the  passionate  friend- 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        141 

ships  to  camp  comrades,  the  peculiar  tenderness  to 
manly  religious  impression  at  night  when  the  fire 
burns  low — these  seem  to  be  reversions  to  a  more 
primitive  state  and  opportunities  for  the  most  inti- 
m.ate  and  enduring  and  uplifting  influence  upon  the 
lives  of  boys.  It  has  been  my  regret  that  I  have  not 
yet  been  able  to  test  these  means  personally,  although 
I  have  studied  them  at  first  hand,,  but  I  am  so  con- 
vinced of  their  value  that  I  count  the  summer  rather 
than  the  winter  the  time  of  opportunity,  in  church  or 
community,  for  helping  boys.  It  is  pathetic  to  notice 
how  uneasy  the  city  boy  is  at  first  in  the  country,  how 
its  loneliness  and  discomforts  oppress  him,  but  after 
he  has  found  ^himself,  as  he  will  in  a  few  days,  if  the 
right  stufif  is  in  him,  nature's  silent  evangelism  almost 
transfigures  him  with  its  welcome  and  wonder.  A 

Saving.  In  this  connection  it  seems  necessary  only  \ 
to  comm;eaid  highly  the  plan  of  the  Stamp  Savings  | 
Society  and  the  pass-book  system  of  the  boys'  clubs. 

Music.  Believing  in  the  power  of  music  to  soothe 
the  savage  breast,  several  clubs  have  organized 
choruses.  Churches  organize  boy-choirs  as  much  to  \ 
help  the  boys,  as  to  help  the  church  music.  Some 
clubs  print  the  better  popular  ballads  of  the  day, 
mingled  with  patriotic  songs,  on  sheets, for  singing  in 
unison.  Contrast  the  sunset  hour  in  a  college  town 
with  hundreds  of  boys  singing  on  the  campus  with  the 
same  unmusical  or  uproarious  hour  in  a  large  village 
or  small  city,  and  you  will  see  something  of  what 
music  will  do. 


> 


^ 


142  The   Boy   Problem 

Nature  Study.  I  have  already  spoken  sufficiently 
of  collections,  of  vacation  schools,  of  summer  camps 
and  of  winter  groups  for  nature  study.  I  commend 
the  Agassiz  Association.  The  garden-plots  for  boys 
at  Dayton,  Ohio,  and  the  exhibitions  and  prizes  con- 
nected therewith  are  interesting  both  socially  and  in- 
dustrially. 

Drarna.  This  instinct  is  much  neglected.  It  is  as 
legitimate  as  any,  and  craves  expression.  Mr.  Wil- 
liam A.  Clark  speaks  of  "the  boys'  mind,  cursed  with 
melodrama."  He  is  referring  to  the  street  boy  and 
his  interest  in  sensational  news,  prize  fights  and  the 
plays  of  the  South  End  playhouse.  Some  substitute 
for  these  evils  must  exist.  The  charade,  the  dialogue, 
the  missionary  and  Sunday-school  concert,  and  the 
desire  of  boys  and  girls  to  "get  up  an  entertainment," 
are  manifestations  of  the  same  instinct  in  our  church 
life.  I  am  watching  for  light  on  this  matter  with  much 
interest.  In  this  age,  when  open  church  opposition 
to  the  theater  is  becoming  silent,  our  children  will  be 
kept  from  the  real  temptations  of  the  modern  theater 
by  giving  them  their  own  opportunities  for  express- 
ing this  instinct  for  personifying  character  and  action. 
In  adolescence  dramatics  are  helpful  in  enforcing  un- 
consciousness of  self,  accuracy  in  memory  and  action, 
and"  some  degree  of  grace  of  demeanor.  The  number 
of  published  dramas  suitable  for  boys  is  few.  Re- 
membering their  unwillingness  to  memorize  or  pre- 
pare at  length,  the  most  usable  things  seem  to  be 
poems  acted  in  pantomime,  and  such  entertainments 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        143 

as  "Hiawatha,"  "The  Husking,"  "The  District 
School,"  etc.  The  novel-readingi  craze  is  a  kindred 
one,  and  may  be  similarly  met.  A  sedate  Congrega- 
tional women's  home  missionary  paper  contained  re- 
cently a  most  stirring  little  play  of  western  missionary 
adventure  to  be  performed,  by  boys,  which  was  called 
"a  missionary  concert  exercise."  I  don't  care  what 
you  call  it.     It  was  a  good  thing. 

The  Knights  of  King  Arthur  helps  the  dramatic  in- 
stinct without,  including  the  theatrical  element. 

Socials.  I  have  advocated  the  organizing  of  boys 
and  girls  separately.  In  organizations  for  sitting  still 
and  talking  in. meeting  I  insist  on  this,  for  those  two 
things  are  specialties  of  little  girls.  But  in  societies 
of  the  more  active  sort  it  does  not  make  so  much  dif- 
ftTence,  for  the  boys  and  girls  before  they  are  thirteen 
will  not, pay  any  attention  to  each  other.  It  is  desir- 
able, when  children  are  maturing,  that  they  should  be 
brought  together  under  adult  auspices  for  mutual  ac- 
Tjuaintance  and  development.  The  things  that  do 
take  place  at  church  socials  and  unchaperoned  chil- 
dren's parties,  if  written  out  would  make  a  chapter  of 
horrors.  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  a  sensible  church 
social  for  boys  and  girls?  It  is  a  fact  that  some  pa- 
rents think  a  dancing  school  is  a  better  place  for  their 
children  than  the  church  vestry.  No  doubt  it  does 
pay  some  attention  to  manners.  In  the  age  of  physi- 
cal exuberance  these  socials  need  special  attention. 
They  should  be  small.  The  children  should  come  in 
sections,  if  there  are  too  many  to  come  at  once.  There 


144  ^^^    Boy   Problem 

should  be  one  head,  who  should  have  a  definite  plan 
for  the  entertainment  to  be  provided,  and  a  sufficient 
body  of  adult  assistants.  The  pleasure  should  be 
spontaneous  and  much  of  it  provided  by  the  children 
themselves,  but  it  should  be  refining,  of  continuous 
interest,  inclusive  of  all,  and  governed  in  its  length  by 
the  bed  times  of  the  children.  It  should  also  be  re- 
membered that  when  well  meaning  people  ask  chil- 
dren to  come  from  their  homes  in  the.  evening, 
whether  to  play  or  to  pray,  they  are  responsible  that 
those  children  shall  arrive  home  early  and  in  good 
company.  Personally  I  am  through  with  affairs  that 
send  young  girls  forth  on  city  streets  at  nine  o'clock 
with  accidental  or  self-chosen  chaperonage. 

Stories.  Not  only  is  .the  story  the  chief  way  of 
teaching  in  both  the  secular  and  the  Sunday-school 
until  the  child  is  well  along  in^adolescence,  but  it  is  a 
method  of  universal  interest.  It  was  the  primitive 
form  of  history  and  the  first  means  of  perpetuating 
crude  scientific  discovery  and  religious  tradition.  It 
is  the  material  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the,  charm 
of  the  New.  It  is  a  perpetual  interpretation  of  life. 
Fairy  stories  not  only  appeal  to  but  are  the  actual 
translation  of  child-life,  which  is  fairy  life,  in  its, won- 
der, credulity  and  ignorance  of  boundaries  and  limita-r 
tions.  Stories  of  courage  and  adventure  also  reflecj 
that  era  of  hero-worship  and  out-of-door  in  whicH 
the  adolescent  lives.  Miss  Vostrovsky  in  an  exami- 
nation of  children's  own  stories  found  that  they  told 
stories  about  children  rather  than  older  persons  in  the 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        145 

proportion  of  40  to  i,  true  rather  than  imaginary 
stories,  as  49  to  7,  and  of  unusual  rather  than  ordinary 
subjects  as  45  to  11.  She  also  gives  a  chart  of  the 
elements  of  boys'  interest  in  stories,  which  I  reduce 
to  per  cents,  as  follows :  action,  36 ;  name,  24 ;  appear- 
ance, 10 ;  possession,  7 ;  speech,  5  ;  place,  5  ;  time,  3 ; 
feeling,  2 ;  dress,  2 ;  esthetic  details,  i^  ;  sentiment,  i ; 
moral  qualities,  i ;  miscellaneous,  2J^. 

Believing  that  the  boy  reproduces  successively  the 
ideals  of  the  race.  Prof.  Burr  has  applied  to  the  boys 
in  the  federated  clubs  conducted  by  students  of  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  Training  School  at  Springfield,  a  graded 
course  in  stories,  as  follows  : 

1.  Race  stories,  especially  Teutonic  myths,  leg- 
ends, and  folklore.  Stories  appealing  to  the  imagina- 
tion and  illustrating  the  attempts  of  the  child  race  to 
explain  the  wonders  of  the  world  in  which  he  lives. 

2.  Stories  of  nature ;  animal  and  plant  stories. 

3.  Stories  of  individual  prowess;  hero  tales, — • 
Samson,  I  Hercules,  etc.     Stories  of  early  inventions. 

4.  Stories  of  great  leaders  and  patriots.  Social 
heroes  from  Moses  to  Washington. 

5.  Stories  of  love ;  altruism ;  love  of  woman ;  love 
of  country  and  home ;  love  of  beauty,  truth  and  God. 

He  suggests  also  the  possibility  of  associating  with 
these  stories,  as  appropriate  means  of  expression,  ac- 
tivities as  follows: 

With  nature  stories,  myths  and  legends  would  be 
associated:  tramps  in  the  woods,  and  every  variety 
of  nature  study ;  care  of  animals,  plants,  etc. 


146  The   Boy  Problem 

With  stories  of  individual  prowess  would  be  asso- 
ciated the  individualistic  games,  athletic  and  gymnas- 
tic work  for  the  development  of  individual  strength 
and  ability,  also,  constructive  work  of  the  more  ele- 
mentary type, — work  with  clay,  knife  work,  basket 
weaving,  etc. 

With  the  stories  of  great  leaders  and  patriots 
would  be  associated  games  which  involve  team  play, 
leadership,  obedience. to  leader,  and  subordination  of 
self  to  the  group. 

With  the  altruistic  stories  would  be  associated  al- 
truistic activities  adapted  to  boy  nature, — the  doing 
of  something  for  other  boys. less  fortunate. 

The  story,  not  the  homily,  is  with  children  the  su- 
preme teaching  agency  for  moral  impression.  The 
moral,  by  the  way,  is  better  not  at  the  end  of  the  story, 
but  in  sly  touches  in  the  middle  and  as  produced  by 
the  narrative  itself.  He  who  can  look  into  a  circle  of 
shining  children's  eyes  and  tell  a  good  tale  knows  one 
of  earth's  finest  luxuries.  Oh,  for  more  shamans, 
minnesingers,  troubadours,  bards,  jongleurs  ,or  Pied 
Pipers ! 

Pictures.  I  need  not, speak  of  the  many  uses  of  the 
Perry  Pictures,  the  Elson  Prints,  etc.,  in  creating  an 
interest  in  art,  history,  collecting,  etc.  To  require  a 
group  to  invent  a  story  to  fit  a  picture  is  good  drill 
for  the  imagination.  I  have  found  three  pictures  of 
Holman  Hunt's  especially  helpful  in  the  religious  in- 
struction of  adolescents.  There  is  something  in  their 
opulence  of  detail  and  mystic  beauty  which  makes 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        147 

them  singularly  effective.  They  may  be  used  for  im- 
pressing the  soleimn  lesson  of  the  importance  of  ado- 
lescence as  the  time  of  choice  and  opportunity.  First, 
I  use  "The  Child  in  the  Temple."  I  point  out  the 
many  details :  the  inscription  on  the  door,  the  doves, 
the  rejected  stone  in  the  court,  the  blind  beggar,  the 
lamplighter,  the  babe  brought  to  circumcision. 
Then  the  characters  appear:  the  doctors  with  their 
scrolls  and  phylacteries — one  is  blind — Mary  with  her 
look  of  amazement  and  love,  Joseph  with  his  protect- 
ing hand,  and  the  boys  in  the  picture — the  musicians, 
the  slave  and  the  Boy  Jesus.  It  is  his  hour  of  awak- 
ening to  life's  meaning,  God's  will  and  his  hour  of 
choice.  I  use  the  "Light  of  the  World"  to  lead  to  the 
thought  of  the  life-door  at  which  the  Christ  knocks, 
which  can  be  opened  only  from  zuithin.  And  "The 
Shadow  of  the  Cross"  suggests  the  manliness  of  the 
young  Christ  and  his  choice  of  the  cross  rather  than 
the  jewels  over  which  his  mother  lingers. 

Questions.  The  true  leader  will  be  often  Socratic. 
He  will  not  furnish  categorical  catechetical  answers, 
.  but,  finding  that  the  one  thing  humanity  and  especially 
child-humanity  is  unwilling  to  do  is  to  think,  he  will 
constantly  in  private  and  in  public  suggest  haunting 
and  leading  questions  of  ideal  and  practical  ethics 
which  must  and  will  be  answered.  -..., 

Sex-instruction.  I  believe  that  sex-perversions  are 
the  most  common,  subtle  and  dangerous  foes  that 
threaten  our  American  life.  Intemperance  is  fright- 
ful, but  it  is  a  perpetual  object  of  attacks,  some  of 


\ 


148-  ^  The   Boy  Problem 

» 
which  are  successful.  The  appetite  which  excites  it 
is  unnatural  and  has  to  be  acquired.  The  sex-appe- 
tite is  universal,  it  partakes  of  the  extreme  selfishness 
of  a  most  selfish  period,  and  its  sins  are  so  hidden,  so 
general  and  reach  such  personal  and  intimatei  rela- 
tions that  it  is  difficult  to  crusade  against  them. 
These  perversions  usually  have  their  root  and, acquire 
their  dominion  in  adolescence,  when  passion  is  most 
active,  ignorance  most ,  great  and  self-control  most 
weak. 

The  (topic  has  been  handled  with  so  much  senti- 
^  mentality,  morbidness  and  downright  devilishness 
Uthat  I  will  make  a  strenuous  effort  to  treat  it  with 
^^!  sober  common  sense.  The  three  sex-temptations  to 
which  boys  are  subject  are,  I  take  it,  impure  thoughts 
and  conversation,  self-abuse  and  fornication.  The 
first  temptation  is  the  result  of  knowledge  of  sex  mat- 
ters gained  from  impure  and  imperfect  sources  and  is 
stimulated  by  a  desire  to  complete  this  knowledge,  by 
the  impression  that  such  knowledge  is  esoteric  and  is 
to  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  stolen  sweets,  and  by  the 
development  of  sexual  appetite  with  maturity.  This 
temptation  is  to  be  met  in  the  home  by  stripping  the 
subject  of  a  mystery  which  it. does  not  possess,  by  re- 
vealing  frankly  and  simply,  as  curiosity  arises,  the 
facts  of  sex  as  a  part  of  general  physiology,  and  by 
such  an  emphasis  upon  the  holiness  of  the  function, 
the  sacrifices  of  maternity  and  the  necessity  of  a  sound 
body  as  the  antecedent  of  future  parenthood  as  shall 
give    the    moral    cleanness    and    the    ideals    to    lift 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        149 

the  child  above  brooding,  unenHghtened,  morbid 
thoughts  and  passion-feeding  conversation.  The 
matter  of  self-abuse  is  to  be  dealt  with  physiologically 
also,  a  fair  statement  of  its  effect  upon  the  nerves,  en- 
durance and  energy  of  the  growing  boy  explained, 
and  contempt  ^expressed  for  it  as  a  nasty  habit  rather 
than  the  implication  that  it  is  physically  or  spiritually 
damning.  I  think  we  may  as  well  face  the  fact  that 
the  practice  is,  for  at  least  a  short  period  in  life,  well- 
nigh  universal.  To  teach  physical  horrors  which  may 
not  follow  is  not  to  deter  those  to  whom  they  do  not 
follow  and  is  to  put  others  under  the  control  of  the 
quack  practitioner,  while  to  preach  that  this  vice  is 
the  unpardonable  sin  is  to  dishearten  those  who 
struggle  against  it  in  vain,  but  who  may,  if  they  are 
dealt  with  indirectly,  outgrow  it  or  be  weaned  away 
from  it.  This  habit  is  much  a  matter  of  nutrition, 
clothing,  hygiene,  association  and  physical  exercise. 
Fornication  when  it  occurs  with  boys  may  be  |^e  re- 
sult of  an  abnormal  sexual  nature,'  but  it  is  niojp  apt 
to  be  the  result  of  information  gained  surreptmously 
and  curiosity  unduly  aroused  and  of  evil  companion- 
ship or  unusual  temptation.  It  is  important  to  con- 
tradict the  impression  given  by  much  of  our  literature 
that  this  sin  is  romantic  and  semi-heroic,  and  to 
show  its  essential  cruelty,  selfishness  and  beastliness. 
The  method  of  treatment  for  all  these  evils  is,  in 
general,  to  delay  and  temper  sexuality  by  plain  food, 
early  rising,  thorough  bathing,  a  watchful  care  of 
reading,   companionship  and   causes   of   excitement, 


150  The   Boy  Problem  ' 

plenty  of  exdrcise  and  the  full  occupation  of  time, 
^he  close  and  mysterious  connection  between  the  rise 
of  the  religious  and  the  sexual  instincts  makes  it  seem 
possible  to  make  one  govern  the  other.  It  is  upon 
these  two  matters,  which  come  so  near  to  the  soul, 
that  one  can  draw  closest  to  a  boy's  life.  Ideals  are, 
I  believe,  the  final  and,  supreme  safeguard  of  purity. 
I  agree  with  Professor  H.  M.  Burr  that  ''the  posses- 
sion of  high  ideals  of  bodily  strength,  of  the  essential 
elements  of  strong  manhood  and  a  high  ideal  of  wo- 
man" are  the  things  that  hold  when  all  else  fails. 

The  place  for  doing  this  work  is  the  home.  It  is 
strange  that  parents  should  be  willing  that  stable- 
boys,  quacks  and  villains  should  become  the  instruc- 
tors and  guides  in  those  matters  which  have  so  much 
to  do  with  personal  purity,  the  morality  of  the  com- 
monwealth and  the  future  of  the  race. 

Where  the  parents  are  not  doing  their  duty  it  must 
be  done  by  others.  But  when  others  take  this  up  the 
best  way  to  use  first  is  to  try  to  persuade  fathers  to 
perform  their  tasks.  "Purity  talks"  should  be  given 
to  fathers  rather  than  to  boys.  Books  may  be  sug- 
gested to  fathers  for  wise  information.  A  few  are 
commended  in  the  Bibliography.  If  boys  must  be  in- 
structed by  anybody  outside  their  home  they  should 
\  be- dealt  with  individually  and  by  conversation.  No 
I  book  has  been  written  or  can  be  written  which  is  suit- 
jable  to  put  in  a  boy's  hand.  If  it  tells  too  Httle  it  will 
larouse  his  curiosity.  If  it  tells  too  much  it  will  in- 
\fiame  his  imagination.       The  effort  is  to  be  not  to 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        151 

make  him  think  about  this  subject,  but  to  satisfy  his  v^ 
legitimate  curiosity  and  get  him  to  thinking  about 
other  things.  This  is  why  I  object  to  "purity  talks" 
to  boys.  The  subject  is  for  them  not  .social  but  indi- 
vidual. They  are  not  to  go  out  and  exchange  words 
about  it  and  brood  over  it.  The  strongest  force  forj 
purity  in  the  boys'  club  is  that  it  is  a  time-filler  andj 
energy-expender  for  boys  and  a  means  of  transform- 
ing an  abnormal  appetite  into  healthful  physical  exer- 
cise. The  thing  which  we  want  to  get  our  boys  to  do 
is  to  realize  that  it  is  a  noble  and  knightly  thing,  as 
well  as  a  necessity  to  many,  as  Professor  Burt  G. 
Wilder  has  said,  ''to  go  into  training"  for  a  manly 
struggle  with  the  sensual  side  of  his  nature. 

An  encouraging  illustration  of  the  way  this  wiser 
treatment  works  is  seen  in  its  results  at  the  Good  Will 
Home  for  Boys  in  Maine.  As  each  boy  enters  the 
school  he  is  during  some  informal  conversation  in- 
formed by  the  principal  regarding  the  wise  regulation 
of  his  body  with  especial  reference  to  the  dangers  of 
puberty.  No  further  reference  is  ever  made  to  the 
matter,  unless  the  boy  makes  it  himself,  as  he  often 
does,  when  he  comes  across  some  alarming  bit  of  mis- 
information, but  among  all  the  teachers  and  in  all  the 
life  of  the  school  it  is  insisted  that  the  sexual  organs 
are  simply  a  commonplace  and  not  a  shameful  or  mys- 
terious portion  of  the  human  body.  Before  the  close 
of  his  course  each  boy  receives  in  the  same  way  from 
the  principal  such  information  as  will  help  him  meet 
further  temptation  and  prepare  him  for  married  life. 


152  The   Boy  Problem 

The  result  is  this :  young  men  who  have  associated 
with  these  boys  most  intimately  for  a  considerable 
period  during  the  summer  find  that  the  conversation 
of  all  is  free  from  obscenity,  and  that  the  moral  life  of 
the  school  is  pure. 

I  am  glad  to  note  that  the  boys'  departments  of  our 
Christian  Associations  and  many  religious  workers 
with  boys  are  taking  this  up,  but  I  wish  they  would 
first  take  lessons  from  Mr.  Hinckley  in  the  art  of  how 
to  do  it. 

There  are  other  boys'  club  methods  which  I  could 
mention.  Some  of  them  Were  suggested  in  the  de- 
scriptions of  the  various  organizations  in  the  last 
chapter.  The  use  of  humor  will  not  be  forgotten, 
a  trait  which  is  universal  in  boyhood.  What  we  call 
noisiness,  teasing,  hoodlumism,  practical  joking  and 
even  irreverence  is  what  some  one  styles  ''joint  hu- 
mor." Remembering  that  this  is  so,  the  best  way  to 
attack  those  nuisances  is  by  the  expression  of  hu- 
mor in  better  ways.  Conundrums,  puzzles,  "sells," 
"yarns,"  and  newspaper  jokes  are  good  bait  for  boys, 
who  are  usually  as  well  provided- as  their  leader  with 
material  and  quite  as  quick  to  take  advantage  of  their 
opportunity.  The  illustrating  of  the  personal  habits 
of  cleanliness,  temperance,  reverence,  good  taste,  is  a 
constant  privilege.  Anything  of  the  other  sort  in  a 
leader  is  a  complete  disqualification.  To  encourage  a 
boy  to  have  a  pet  of  some  kind  is  far  better  than  to 
get  him  to  join  a  society  for  rescuing  stray  cats'  and 
then  bragging  about  it.     Indeed,  doing  for  others  is 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        153 

the  strongest  ethical  force  which  the  boy  can  feel. 
We  are  told  truly  that  "girls  are  trained  to  give  up, 
boys  to  demand."  Often  the  boys'  club  exaggerates 
this  tendency.  Talks  on  practical  questions  by  men 
whom  the  boys  may  justly  admire  are  also  an  ethical 
influence  of  great  importance.  The  introduction  of 
recognitions  and  special  privileges  will  have  a  stimu- 
lating effect,  if  they  are  made  accessible  to  a  fair  grade 
of  effort  rather  than  exclusive  .to  a  first  and  second. 
The  last  method  which  I  name  is  the  most  important. 
Personality.  The  three  curses  of  humanitarian 
v.'ork  are  utilitarianism,  uniformity  and  numbers. 
And  the  greatest  of  these  is  numbers.  It  takes  per- 
petual vigilance  to  do  church  or  social  work  without 
becoming  a  slave  to  the  addition  table.  All  work  for 
men  that  amounts  to  anything  is  in  the  end  the  in- 
fluence of  personality  on  personaHty.  So  in  boys' 
v/ork  we  have  two  things  of  importance  to  consider: 
the  personality  of  the  leader  and  that  of  the  boy.  Mr. 
Mason  suggests  as  the  easier  qualifications  for  such  a 
leader  that  "he  must  necessarily  have  the  magnetism 
of  Moses,  the  patience  of  Job  and  the  wisdom  of  Solo- 
mon." It  would  be  unfortunate  to  place  the  standard 
so  high  that  everybody  would  shrink  from  the  work. 
The  boy  is  influenced  by  his  leader  in  two  ways: 
through  his  imitativeness  and  through  his  affections. 
He  idealizes  his  leader  and  tries  to  become  like  him. 
./^Teaching  is  really  a  matter  of  contagion  rather  than 
of  instruction."  His  leader  must  therefore  be  a  per- 
son of  character  and  self-control.     He  loves  his  leader 


154  ^^^   Boy   Problem 

and  wants  to  do  for  him.  His  leader  must  be  a  per- 
son of  ideals  who  can  offer  him  good  and  true  things 
to  do. 

The  personality  of  the  boy  must  never  be  forgotten. 
We  must  forget  our  addition  table  and  stop  seeing 
our  boys  as  flocks.  The  most  important  thing  any 
one  can  do  for  a  boy.  is  to  love  him.  We  must  know 
each  one  in  his  school,  his  home,  his  playing  and 
gathering  places  as  well  as  at  the  club  or  our  own 
home.  There  are  so  many  different  kinds  of  boy  un- 
der one  hat  and/  boys  differ  so  much  in  their  individ- 
ual interests  and  the  interests  of  one  boy  change  so 
fast  that  it  takes  a  watchful  and  encyclopedic  mind  to 
keep  track  of  them. 

In  every  group  of  boys  there  is  at  least  a  third  who 
cannot  be  reached  by  any  group  method.  They  may 
be  unsocial,  they  do  not  like  what  other  boys  care  for, 
they  have  not  the  leisure  or  the  permission  to  join 
a  club.  They  are  worth  just  as  much  as  the  rest. 
These  must  be  won  by  personal  approach. 

The  way  to  help  boys  by  the  methods  we  have  men- 
tioned, as  Lancaster  says,  is  to  "inspire  enthusiastic 
activity."  **You  can  do  anything  with  boys.  You 
can  do  nothing  for  boys."  ''Oh,"  says  one,  "you  give 
the  boys  something  easy  all  the  time."  The  things 
that  inspire  enthusiastic  activity  in  a  boy  are  not  easy 
things.  Is  baseball  easy?  Is  football  easy?  Is 
swimming  a  mile  easy?  Are  wood- work  or  parallel 
bars  or  punching  bags  easy?  Interest  is  not  ease  but 
it  iiiakes  things  easy.     In  that  marvelous  study  in  the 


Suggestions  as  to  How  io  Help  Boys        155 

New  Testament  of  Jesusi  and  the  Rich  Young  Man, 
we  have  a  study  of  Jesus  and  adolescence,  and  the  ap- 
peal that  the  Master  made  which  aroused  that  sloth- 
ful idler  almost  out  of  a  lifetime  of  languor,  was  an 
appeal  to  the  difficult,  with  this  inspiration,  his  own 
passionately  declared  love  for  him. 
,  We  should  use  as  many  methods  as  we  can  thor- 
oughly, letting  each  get  its  effect  and  coordinating 
also,  so  as  to  feed  the  boy  with  as  many  interests  as 
possible.  We  cannot  tell  which  one  may  determine 
his  life-work  or  mould  his  character.  It  is  inspiring 
to  remember  that  the  little  group  club  of  boys  is  often 
a  lad's  first  entrance  to  the  social  institutions  of  his 
race  and  that  in  the  self-originating  exercises  of  the 
boys'  club  one  may  do  what  the  school  does  not  ac- 
complish— help  the  boy  to  decide  what  he  shall  be. 

We  should  give  each  boy  something  to  know, 
something  to  love  and  something  to  do.  That  is,  we 
must  train  his  mind,  his  heart  and  his  hand,  and  while 
doing  these  three  we  train  his  will. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  boys  most  in  need  of  suc- 
cor are  of  two  classes,  the  children  of  the  rich  and  the 
children  of  the  very  poor.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
Hfe  and  activities  of  the  common  people  are  the  sound 
core  of  the  nation's  strength.  The  boys  of  the  rich 
are  debauched  by  luxury  and  the  free  use  of  money. 
The  boys  of  the  very  poor  are  degenerated  by  the  op- 
posite causes,  lack  of  nutrition,  instruction  and  good 
example.  Another  fact  which  shapes  the  whole  prob- 
lem is  that  most  boys  are  living  to-day  in  what  is  for 


156  The   Boy  Problem 

them  an  artificial  environment.  They  live  in  cities. 
No  one  who  has  dealt  with  boys  successively  in  rural 
regions,  large  towns  and  the  city  could  have  failed  to 
notice  how  much  less  potent  in  grasp,  attention  and 
efficiency  are  city  boys,  living  between  walls  and  pave- 
ments and  among  a  thousand  distractions  and  allure- 
ments, than  country  boys,  with  their  freedom,  contact 
with  nature  and  wild  life  and  opportunity  for  origina- 
tion in  work  and  play  in  woodland,  pasture,  and  car- 
penter shop  in  the  barn. 

The  problem  is  by  no  means,  then,  a  missionary 
one,  in  the  sense  that  it  consists  in  providing  clubs 
for  slum  boys  alone.  Tlie  extravagances,  immorality, 
intemperance  and  general  good-for-nothingness  of 
wealthy  boys  are  often  an  alarming  factor  in  our  sub- 
urban life. 

The  difficulty  of  restoring  natural  conditions  among 
unnatural  surroundings  is  tremendous.    It  means  the 

-^^  >H:reation  of  an  artificial  country  atmosphere.  The  in- 
stitutions and  instrumentalities  which  are  striving  to 
do  this  by  their  shops  and  playrooms  and  their  vaca- 
tion philanthropies  are,  though  informally,  among  the 
great  benevolences  and  educational  institutes  of  the 
city,  and  need  and  demand  a  fuller  recognition  and  a 
heartier  support  by  consecration  of  money  and  life. 

The  needs  and  possibilities  of  work  with  adoles- 
cents can  scarcely  be  exaggerated.    One  third  of  life, 
"the  submerged  third,"  as  Dr.  Stanley  Hall  calls  it,  is 
1     in  the  adolescent  period.    One  third  of  the  people  in 

-TX^merica  are  adolescents.    Three  million  of  the  human 


Suggestions  as  to  How  to  Help  Boys        157 

beings  in  America  are  boys  between  twelve  and  six- 
teen years  of  age.  The  so-called  heathen  peoples  are, 
whatever  their  age,  all  in  the  adolescent  period  of  life. 
We  send  missionaries  to  inculcate  among  these  dis- 
tant peoples  morals  and  religion,  which  we  seem  to 
think  our  own  little  folks  can  possess  by  some  innate 
providential  instinct.  Work  among  men  has  been  em- 
phasized as  of  prime  importance,  but  as  compared 
with  work  among  boys  it  is  as  salvage  to  salvation. 

The  attention  of  the  Qiurch  during  the  lat^t  twenty 
years  has  so  turned  toward  the  young  that'it  takes  no 
prophet  to  foretell  that  this  is  to  be  the  central  work 
of  the  Church  in  the  new  century.  Jesus,  who  ap- 
peared before  the  world  at  the  beginning  of  his  ad- 
olescence and  left  it  at  its  close,  set  the  child  in  the 
midst  and  said,  "Of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
The  psychologist  and  the  Christian  are  both  listening 
to  this  word  of  the  Master.  "Save  the  world  in  ad- 
olescence" will  be  the  new  war  cry  of  missions. 

In  the  development  of  the  boys'  department  of  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  in  the  growth  of  the  big  city  boys' 
clubs,  in  the  founding  of  such  institutions  as  the  Bible 
Normal  College,  whose  motto  is  Horace  Mann's 
"Wherever  anything  is  growing  one  former  is  worth 
a  thousand  reformers,"  in  the  opening  of  a  new  pro- 
fession, that  of  the  teaching  ministry,  in  lay  work  in 
the  Church,  we  have  abundant  intimations  that  the 
field  of  work  for  boys  is  soon  to  oflPer  many  oppor- 
tunities for  many  men's  life-work.  In  the  smaller 
groups   of  those   engaged  in   social  service,   in  the 


158  The  Boy  Problem- 

Sunday-school  and  the  other  forms  of  church  nurture, 
the  harvest  is  already  white  for  splendid  consecrations 
of  volunteer  helpers. 

This  volunteer  movement  will  be  as  truly  one  for 
the  devotion  of  young  people  as  the  famous  student 
movement  which  was  born  at  Northfield  in  1886,  and 
it  will  be  both  for  home  and  foreign  work.  Foreign 
missionary  work,  already  conducted  with  a  breadth 
and  scope  which  is  a  lesson  to  home  church  work,  will 
be  enriched  and  made  fruitful  by  the  application  of 
pedagogical  methods  to  the  adolescent  races.  In  the 
home  churches  here  is  the  beckoning  opportunity  for 
the  younger  ministry,  fresh  from  its  own  adolescent 
days.  But  it  is  not  a  priestly  service  alone,  though 
the  calling  is  a  sacred  one.  Many  college  students, 
like  the  one  at  Harvard  who  told  Professor  Peabody 
that  "he  wanted  to  make  Harvard  something  more 
than  a  winter  watering  place,"  have  done  work  for 
boys  during  and  after  college  days,  and  have  some- 
times found  the  religion  in  service,  which  they  had 
lost  in  study.  Joseph  Lee  suggests  that  as  the  young 
page  was  placed  in  charge  of  an  esquire  but  a  few 
years  older  to  learn  knightly  habits  and  then  sent  to 
the  young  knight's  castle  to  learn  knightly  ideals,  so 
the  boys  of  to-day  need  the  contact  of  chivalrous 
young  men  to  make  them  courtly  and  noble  men. 


VI 
THE  BOY  PROBLEM  IN  THE  CHURCH 

The  boy  problem  in  the  Church  is  not  different^ 
from  that  in  the  home,  the  school  and  the  community. 
It  is  the  same  boy  everywhere.  He  may  step  a  little 
more  quietly,  wear  a  different  suit  of  clothes  and  have 
a  whiter  looking  face  and  hands  than  elsewhere,  but 
he  is  the  same  after  all:  physically  alert  and  restless, 
emotionally  eager,  socially  friendly  though  shy,  men- 
tally absorptive  and  curious,  volitionally  independent 
and  stubborn,  and  with  a  spiritual  nature  which  is  se- 
cretly but  honestly  feeling  for  foundations  and  devel- 
opment. 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  it  will  be  impossible  to  separate 
one  portion  of  this  complex  being  from  another  and 
train  it  by  itself,  just  it  would  be  impossible  to  act 
toward  the  boy  in  school  as  if  he  were  all  intellect  and 
no  body  or  in  the  gymnasium  as  if  he  were  all  body 
and  no  intellect.  To  the  Church  as  elsewhere  the  i 
whole  boy  comes  and  in  it  as  elsewhere  he  must  be 
symmetrically  trained. 

The  methods  of  training  boys  in  the  Church,  then, 
will  not  essentially  differ  from  those  used  elsewhere. 
The  Church  desires  as  much  as  does  the  gymnasium 
that  the  boy  should  have  a  sound  body  and  as  much 
as  the  school  that  he  should  have  a  sound  mind  and 
as  much  as  either  that  he  should  have  a  sound  heart 


i6o  The   Boy   Problem 

to  govern  both.  In  short,  with  other  philanthropies 
that  work  for  boys,  the  Church  stands  for  character, 
developed  in  mind,  body  and  spirit. 

It  may  be  true  that  the  Church  seeks  more  than 
any  other  institution  does.  In  seeking  Christian  char- 
acter it  seeks  character  moved  by  the  Christ-motive 
as  a  motive  higher  than  any  others  possible.  But  as 
elements  of  that  character  it  must  recognize,  with 
others,  the  interdependence  of  mind  and  body  and 
the  essentials  of  will-training  and  moral  training  by 
self  activity  which  have  already  been  emphasized. 

When  we  come  to  ask  what  the  Church  has  found 
out  about  the  training  of  the  religious  nature,  we  are 
at  once  impressed  that  both  the  oldest  and  the  newest 
study  have  been  little  more  than  statistical  analy- 
sis. You  can  catalogue  a  date  or  an  event,  but  it  is 
hard  to  catalogue  a  boy.  Whether  it  be  in  the  annals 
of  some  ancient  revival  or  in  the  charts  of  Starbuck 
we  have  learned  little  more  than  this:  that  at  certain 
ages  is  conversion  most  to  be  expected,  that  it  is 
brought  about  by  a  certain  number  of  immediate  mo- 
tives which  are  scheduled  and  by  a  much  larger  num- 
ber of  distant  motives,  equally  efficient,  which  are 
forgotten  and  are  not  scheduled,  and  that  in  addition 
to  those  youths  gained  by  certain  methods  testimony 
is  completely  silent  as  to  how  many  are  actually  alien- 
ated by  the  same  methods. 

Without  claiming  to  have  gt)ne  deeper  than  others 
into  these  depths  of  the  soul-life,  let  me  state  the 
things  which  T  belieVe  the  Church  is  trying  to  do  and 


/■  \-  <  i--  r\  /^ 


Or 


UM;u 


th.< 


The  Boy  Problem  in   the   Church  i6i 

show  what  seems  to  be  the  probable  means  of  success 
in  these  directions: 

First,  the  Church  is  trying  to  hold  the  boys. 

Recognizing  that  its  methods  in  the  past  have  failed 
to  keep  their  grasp  upon  boys  at  their  age  of  greatest 
need  and  danger,  it  is  trying  to  learn  how  to  retain 
the  boys  through  the  adolescent  period.  In  thus 
seeking  to  fit  its  methods  to  the  growth  of  the  boy 
the  Church  is  doing  one  of  the  best  things  for  future 
Christian  development,  since  habits  of  church-going 
and  loyalty  grow  stronger  and  more  influential  upon 
character  with  each  year  they  are  continued.  I  have 
already  indicated  that,  in  trying  to  hold  boys,  the 
churches  must  use  freer,  more  varied  and  more  un- 
conventional means  than  in  the  past.  If  some  pious 
heart  tremulously  inquires  of  a  given  plan,  "Is  there 
enough  of  Christ  in  it?"  my  straightforward  rejoinder 
shall  be,  "Is  there  enough  boy  it  it?" 

But  this  itself  is  not  enough.  Boys  must  be  won 
to  church  membership.  I  have  commended  the  plan 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  by  which  the  boy  is  never 
allowed  to  think  of  himself  as  anything  but  a  prospec- 
tive communicant.  The  plan  alone  might  seem 
mechanical  were  it  not  supplemented  in  so  many 
churches  of  that  denomination  by  graded  boys'  clubs, 
which  make  a  traditional  loyalty  actual.  My  own  en- 
deavor has  been  so  to  make  the  activities  of  the  boys' 
club  work  toward  loyalty  to  pastor  and  church  and  so 
to  create  the  realization  among  boys  fourteen  years  of 
age  and  over  of  the  naturalness  of  confessing  Christ 


1 62  The   Boy   Problem 

that  it  shall  become  a  current  anticipation.  We  must 
so  adapt  our  help  to  their  conscious  needs  and  so  de- 
velop that  "team-work"  and  fraternity  spirit,  which 
mean  so  much  ii;i  sports  and  in  college,  in  and  for  the 
Church,  that  the  distressing  loss  of  adolescent  life  shall 
be  checked. 

Second,  the  Church  is  trying  to  teach  boys. 

Ev/ery  boys'  club,  every  church  society  for  boys,  is 
in  reality  a  school.  Formal  school  methods  need  not 
be  used,  better  not  be  used,  but  sound  pedagogical 
axioms  must  be  applied  and  there  must  be  the  peda- 
gogic aim. 

As  to  the  subjects  of  teaching,  there  are  the  great 
landmarks  of  religion  taught  in  the  Bible  and  which 
I  outlined  when  I  spoke  of  the  Sunday-school  curricu- 
lum. Hardly  less  important  are  the  applications  in 
conduct,  the  emphasis  of  the  fact  that  character,  as 
President  Hyde  tells  us,  "is  chiefly  to  do  one's  work 
well,"  and  intelligence  of  and  interest  in  the  activities 
of  the  Church  and  the  world-wide  social  and  mission- 
ary work  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  To  boys  in  the  city 
and  those  who  have  few  advantages  there  are  many 
things  supplementary  to  school  life  which  may  well  be 
taught,  especially  those  constructive  crafts  and  plays 
which  arouse  the  energies,  focus  the  attention,  train 
the  will,  make  the  child  creative,  keep  him  from  mor- 
bid introspection  and  direct  to  his  life  mission. 
/  Third,  the  Church  is  trying  to  win  boys  to  the  re- 
ligious life. 

While  we  may  not  fully  know  the  entire  philosophy 


The   Boy  Problem  in   the   Church  163 

of  the  entrance  into  the  reUgious  Ufe,  there  are  some 
things  which  seem  to  be  assured.  Such  are  these: 
the  boy  is  not  irreUgious,  he  is  rather  in  the  lower 
stages  of  the  rehgious  Ufe,  the  imitative,  habituated, 
ethical  stages.  Conversion  is  the  human  act  of  turn- 
ing to  God,  not  a  special  cataclysmal  kind  of  experi- 
ence during  that  act.  Mr.  E.  M.  Robinson  has  put 
the  various  ways  in  which  boys  seem  tO'  enter  the  re- 
ligious Hfe  in  a  homely  but  vivid  statement: 

"Boys  enter  the  religious  life  in  at  least  as  many 
ways  as  they  enter  the  water  for  swimming:  (a)  Some 
plunge  in — a  definite  decision  which  settles  once  for 
all  what  their  attitude  toward  right  and  wrong  shall 
be,  what  their  relation  to  their  God  shall  be.  (b)  Some 
wade  in — deliberately,  cautiously,  step  by  step,  each 
step  revealing  that  another  step  is  desirable,  (c)  Some 
run  in  a  little  way  and  then  come  out  again,  but  con- 
tinue to  run  in  a  little  further  each  time,  till  at  last 
they  swim  ofT — a  number  of  changes  of  mind,  (d) 
Some  are  forced  in.  They  may,  finding  themselves  in, 
decide  to  remain,  or  they  may  make  frantic  struggles 
to  get  out.  (e)  Some  sit  down  on  the  beach  and  sim- 
ply let  the  tide  come  up  about  them,  till  it  floats  them 
oflf — by  not  resisting  the  tide  about  them,  they  prac- 
tically accept  the  situation.  A  boy  enters  the  relig- 
ious life  by  deliberate,  comprehensive  decision,  by  an 
accumulation  of  little  decisions,  by  non-resistance  to 
influence  about  him,  which  is  a  decision.  In  all  cases, 
by  his  own  choice  accepting,  or  "decision." 

These  differences  seem  to  be  temperamental,  where 


164  The   Boy   Problem 

they  are  not  partly  artificial.  The  kind  of  crisis  will 
be  of  the  kind  that  is  sought  for.  In  one  church  the 
child  is  taught  to  belieVe  that  he  is  by  the  covenant 
a  child  of  God.  At  adolescence  the  confirmation  class 
awaits  him  and  his  crisis  is  likely  to  be  one  of  forming 
fresh  ideals  only.  In  another  communion  boys  are 
told  that  they  are  children  of  the  world  and  the  flesh, 
if  not  of  the  devil,  and  they  expect,  strive  after  and 
very  often  attain  a  very  sharp  crisis  of  definite  relig- 
ious purpose. 

I  have  analyzed  carefully  the  different  organiza- 
tions which  are  trying  to  help  boys  in  our  churches. 
I  had  better,  as  a  sort  of  summary,  speak  of  several 
dangers  and  difficulties  in  dealing  with  boys  which  are 
inherent  to  all  these  methods  and  are  besetments  in 
any  other.  One  of  these  is  tradition.  The  fad  of 
to-day  becomes  to-morrow  the  traditional  way  of  do- 
ing things,  and  before  we  know  it  we  haVe  no  other. 

Another  difficulty  is  uniformity.  Tradition  is  the 
mortmain  of  yesterday,  but  uniformity  is  the  iron 
grasp  of  to-day.  Wherever  it  is  it  throttles  conviction 
and  strangles  individualism,  progress  and  soul- 
freedom. 

There  is  also  the  temptation  of  numbers.  As  long 
as  people  love  to  roll  on  their  tongues  the  facit  that 
there  are  fifteen  millions  of  people  in  America's  Sun- 
day-schools and  read  with  awe  the  quarterly  accounts 
of  the  growth  in  figures  of  the  Endeavor  movement, 
they  will  cease  to  try  to  find  out  that  things  need  to 
be  measured  ?.nd  v/eighed  as  well  as  counted  and  that 


The  Boy  Problem  in  the   Church  165 

the  other  milHons,  whom  our  thoughtless  and  careless 
methods  alienate,  cry  up  to  God  continually,  in  the 
face  of  our  complacency. 

But  in  dealing  with  boys  there  is  often  quite  an  op- 
posite tendency.  It  is  the  danger  of  coddling.  Sup- 
posing the  leader  has  few  boys  instead  of  many  and 
is  using  many  thoughtful  methods,  he  may  awake 
some  day  to  find  that  he  has  done  so  much  for  them 
that  they  have  become  paupers  upon  his  charge  for 
recreation,  incentive  and  material  for  character. 

To  avoid  the  danger  of  coddHng  I  would  see  that 
the  boy  had  something  to  do  for  the  church  as  well  as 
the  church  something  for  him.  The  "church  messen- 
ger service  of  boys"  is  a  recent  attractive  device  to 
this  end.  In  the  boy  choir,  the  giving  of  entertain- 
ments, the  sharing  of  good  times  with  others  and  in 
missionary  instruction  and  activity  also  this  can  be  ac- 
complished. If  you  are  seeking  spiritual  aims  I  think 
the  essential  thing  is  to  find  and  group  together  the 
Christian  boys  and  make  them  the  personal,  active 
force  for  evangelizing  the  others.  They  are  worth 
more  than  all  sermons,  methods  and  other  efforts  put 
together. 

But  the  greatest  danger  is  unnaturalness.    It  is  safe    / 
to  say  that  when  one  talks  with  a  boy  in  the  Sunday-  / 
school  class  upon  rehgious  matters  the  teacher  and  / 
the  boy  are  almost  never  their  real  selves.     One  of/ 
the  axioms  of  social  effort  is  never  to  create  a  con-' 
dition  among  those  whom  you  try  to  help  which  you 
cannot  make  a  permanent  one.     This  is  the  immo- 


i66  The   Boy   Problem 

rality  of  an  ordinary  revival.  It  creates  in  the  hot 
night  atmosphere  of  a  church,  in  the  presence  of  a 
crowd  and  with  the  accompaniment  of  fervid  elo- 
quence and  exciting  music,  a  social  and  sense  condi- 
tion which  cannot  be  carried  out  into  the  daylight 
and  the  home  and  business.  So  the  Sunday-school 
teacher  must  be  natural.  It  is  a  cowardly  thing  to 
say  personal  things  and  ask  searching  questions  of  a 
boy  in  the  midst  of  his  fellows  which  you  would  not 
dare  to  ask  that  boy  privately  in  ordinary  conversa- 
tion. It  is  to  protect  these  reserves  thus  rudely  as- 
saulted that  a  boy  puts  on  with  his  Sunday  suit  a  dis- 
guise which  he  carries  to  the  hand-to-hand  encoun- 
ters of  the  Sunday-school  and  Junior  society.  The 
teaching  which  merely  touches  that  artificial  boyhood 
will  be  easily  slipped  off  when  the  disguise  is  removed 
Sunday  evening  and  the  boy  goes  forth  to  the  sport 
and  freedom  of  Monday. 

We  are  unnatural  in  method  often  because  we  ex- 
pect unnatural  results.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the 
danger  of  making  prigs.  Dr.  William  J.  Mutch  sen- 
sibly points  out  that  results  which  are  purely  religious 
when  produced  in  young  children  are  always  to  be  re- 
garded with  suspicion.  The  boy  is  living  on  the  ethi- 
cal rather  than  the  spiritual  level  until  he  is  well  along 
in  adolescence.  He  needs  homely  virtues  more  than 
spiritual  graces.  We  are  to  try  not  to  make  little 
men,  manikins,  but  to  produce  the  promise  of  manli- 
ness. "Even  a  child  is  known" — not  by  his  praying, 
testifying,  ecstacies  but — "by  his  doing." 


The   Boy  Problem  in   the   Church  167 

President  G.  Stanley  Hall  has  lately  said:  ''There 
are  the  best  of  psycho-physiological  reasons  for  hold- 
ing conversion,  or  change  of  heart,  before  pubescence 
to  be  a  dwarfing  precocity.  The  age  at  which  the 
child  Jesus  entered  the  temple  is  as  early  as  any  child 
ought  to  go  about  his  heavenly  Father's  business,  if 
not  too  early  with  our  climate,  temperament  and  life. 
To  prescribe  a  set  of  strong  feelings  at  this  age  may 
introvert  attention  on  physical  states,  increase  pas- 
sional activities,  and  issue  in  a  sort  of  self-flirtation  or 
abnormal  self-consciousness."  The  Rev.  Parris  T. 
Farwell,  who  makes  this  quotation,  adds:  ''The  ob- 
servation of  many  of  us  will  approve  these  words  of 
warning.  It  is  not  evidence  of  the  wisdom  of  a  course 
of  treatment  of  children  that  it  brings  many  of  them 
into  the  Church.  The  real  question  is.  What  kind  of 
Christians  does  it  make?  It  is  comparatively  easy  to 
lead  children  to  assent,  at  a  very  early  age,  to  our 
ideas.  It  is  possible  to  lead  their  imaginative  minds  . 
to  a  conception  of  their  own  sinfulness,  such  as  they, 
ought  not  to  have  at  their  age.  It  is  even  possible  to: 
lead  them  to  an  imaginative  affection  for  Christ  which- 
is  good  so  far  as  it  goes,  and  should  be  cultivated,  but  • 
which  needs  to  be  supplemented  before  it  can  be  the  • 
power  to  hold  and  mould  and  save  which  character-  . 
izes  thef  loyalty,  of  real  discipleship." 

The  ultimate  aim  of  our  effort  is  to  have  not  only 
boyhood  but  also  manhood  in  the  Church.  By  win- 
ning and  holding  boys  and  nurturing  them  in  a  natu- 
ral and  growing  faith  is  the  shortest  road  to  this 
happy  goal. 


1 68  The   Boy   Problem 

In  general,  methods  should  apply  to  nearly  all  the 
boys  as  fast  as  they  come  to  the  age  for  approach. 
Since  the  Sunday-school  is  the  instrumentality 
through  which  pass  nearly  all  the  children  of  the  com- 
munity, it  is  this  agency  which  I  would  exalt  and  im- 
prove and  enlarge  rather  than  those  which  have  fol- 
lowed it. 

It  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that  whatever  work 
for  boys  is  undertaken  in  a  local  church  should  have 
an  authorization  that  shall  make  it  continuous.  Too 
often  when  a  pastor  leaves  a  church  all  the  social  or- 
ganizations which  he  has  built  fall  like  card  houses 
behind  him,  and  his  successor  either  disregards  his 
work  or,  with  little  apparent  reason,  builds  up  another 
entirely  different  set  of  amateur  and  puny  organiza- 
tions. In  the  Episcopal  church  this  mistake  is  not 
often  met  with.  Any  guild  or  society  is  authorized  by 
the  church  and  the  responsibility  of  its  continuance 
is  placed  in  each  successive  rector's  hands. 

The  need  for  continuity  and  permanence,  by  the 
way,  is  an  argument  for  long  pastorates.  In  the  kind 
of  work  I  am  advocating,  where  personality  is  of  so 
much  more  importance  than  method,  time  is  needed 
for  influence  to  be  extended  and  do  its  perfect  work. 

Methods  should  be  natural  in  order  and  application, 
elastic  and  rich  in  variety  and  adapted  to  interest  and 
en^use /those  whom  we  reach.  More  and  more  I 
think  we  may  be  careless  whether  our  own  plan  is 
named  after  or  affiliated  with  any  larger  movement, 
since  there  are  so  many  to  draw  help  from  and  such 


The  Boy  Problem  in  the   Church  169 

variety  of  means  is  necessary  and  since  the  purpose 
of  us  who  have  the  work  to  do  is  not  to  glorify  any 
society  or  movement  but  to  make  manhood  out  of  its 
stuff,  boys. 

The  deepest  thing  I  have  heard  said  lately  was  by 
the  Rev,.  Charles  E.  McKinley:  "Ever.y  method  or 
agency  used  in  Christian  work  must  give  account  to 
God  not  only  for  the  souls  whom  it  wins  and  saves, 
but  also  for  all  whom  it  alienates  and  destroys."  We 
are  not  to  be  satisfied  with  our  success  among  little 
children,  big  girls  and  old  women,  if  in  trying  to  reach 
live  boys  by  the  same  methods  we  find  that  we  cannot 
touch  their  nature  or  needs. 

My  own  experience  and  study  in  a  variety  of  ex- 
periments with  boys  in  the  church  for  a  period  of  over 
nine  years  lead  me  to  condense  my  advice  into  the 
following  suggestions : 

I.  The  church  must  place  "the  child  in  the  midst." 
It  must  organize  around  the  child.  Its  architecture 
and  fittings,  its  services  and  activities  must  make  the 
adolescent  the  first  thought  and  not  an  afterthought. 

II.  There  must  be  in  the  church,  either  pastor  or 
another,  at  least  one  person  who  is  equipped  for  work 
with  boys  and  girls.  In  the  larger  churches  we  must 
differentiate  once  more  the  two  functions  of  the  min- 
istry and  have  again  "the  pastor"  and  "the  teacher." 
In  smaller  churches  and  in  family  churches  I  think  the 
second  service  will  yield  to  a  Sunday  evening  with  the  \ 
young  people.  \ 

III.  The  first  thing  to  do  is  to  develop  in  the  pri- 


170  The   Boy   Problem 

mary  and  principal  human  institution,  the  home,  in- 
telligent and  active  care  of  growing  boys  and  girls. 
The  chief  object  of  pastoral  calling  is  to  confer  about 
the  welfare  of  the  children.  The  chief  normal  work 
to  be  done  is  to  train  teachers  for  boys  and  girls.  The 
imperative  themes  for  the  midweek  meeting  of  the 
chu;:ch  are  such  as  relate  to  childhood,  its  training, 
temptations  and  local  environment.  One  of  the  most 
important  practical  activities  of  the  Church  is  to  fight 
home-destroying  institutions.  Each  sermon  should 
have  a  bearing  upon  the  home. 

IV.  It  is  desirable  to  visit,  study  and  coordinate 
with  the  Church  all  the  other  local  means  of  educa- 
tion, such  as  the  home,  the  school,  playgrounds,  va- 
cations, libraries,  museums,  social  settlements,  local 
historical  sites,  etc.,  before  defining  the  special  boys' 
work  in  a  single  church,  in  order  that  the  work  done 
may  be  supplementary  and  may  take  such  advantage 
as  is  possible  from  these  others. 

V.  The  following  church  instrumentalities  are  to 
be  relied  upon,-  in  the  order  of  their  importance,  in 
work  with    boys: 

The  Sunday  morning  service  and  sermon. 
The  Sunday-school. 

A  week-day  institute  for  boys  affiliated  with  the 
Sunday-school. 

Home  visitation  and  consultation. 

VI.  The  following  is  a  practicable  scheme  for  the 
church  education  of  boys,  which  requires  only  the  in- 
strumentalities and  workers  possessed  by  an  average 
church : 


The  Boy  Problem  in  the   Church  171 

1.  Religious  training:  , 

The  Sermon. 

Sunday-school  instruction. 

The  Pastor's  Class. 

Seeking  opportunities  for  service  for  chil- 
dren: choir,  errands,  entertainments,  indi- 
;  vidual  activity,  systematic  giving,  helping 

at  home,  keeping  the  Ten  Commandments 
and  living  the  old-fashioned  virtues. 

The  evangelizing  of  boys  by  boys. 

Personal  and  individual  care. 

2.  Will-training : 

Such  as  by  wood-work,  cooperative  con- 
struction, making  of  games,  designing  of 
Bible  book-covers,  games  and  play. 

Recognitions  for  church  attendance. 

3.  Heart-training : 

Such  as  by  liturgy,  music,  stories  and  pic- 
tures, drama,  pets,  the  Knights  of  King 
Arthur,  Bible  and  hymn-learning,  person- 
ality of  leaders. 

4.  Mind-training: 

By  collections,  printing,  saving,  missionary 
and  general  information,  talks  and  tours, 
superintended  reading. 

5.  Physical  training: 

Marches  and  drills,  tramps  and  camps, 
wood- work. 

6.  Social  training: 

Socials,  entertaining  others,  social  service, 
missionary  giving. 


172  The  Boy  Problem 

I  have  been  led  more  and  more  to  exalt  the  Sunday 
morning  church  service  as  the  chief  religious  influ- 
ence upon  boys.  I  have  received  encouraging  results 
from  the  offering  of  simple  recognitions  for  attend- 
ance and  from  a  boy  choir.  I  have  also  been  im- 
pressed that  by  ''the  foolishness  of  preaching"  much 
can  be  done.  Mr.  McKinley,  whom  I  have  quoted 
before,  exalts  this  as  the  divinely  appointed  agency 
for  the  redemption  of  boys.  He  calls  attention  to  it  as 
the  opportunity  "where,  all  unquestioned  and  all  un- 
observed, he  may  lift  up  his  heart  to  God,  where, 
without  being  hastened  or  pressed,  he  may  think  out 
his  long  thoughts  until  they  settle  his  character  for 
life."  A  rich,  expressive  service,  thoughtful  and  gen- 
erous prayer  and  fervid,  luminous  preaching — surely 
these  are  bread  of  life  to  the  age  of  wonder  and  awak- 
ening. 

I  used  to  spend  considerable  labor  in  that  difficult 
task  of  preparing  five-minute  "sermonettes."  They 
require  as  much  work  as  a  sermon.  Somehow  they 
interrupt  the  continuity  of  the  service.  Recently  I 
give  the  entire  time  at  one  morning  service  a  month 
to  a  sermon  to  children  and  young  people.  I  am  con- 
sciously addressing  children  from  ten  to  fourteen. 
The  theme,  the  language  and  the  treatment  are  solely 
for  them.  I  find  that  no  sermons  are  more  popular. 
There  are  many  younger  children  who  understand 
most  of  what  is  said  and  there  are  a  great  many 
adults  of  adolescent  minds  and  hearts  who  are  over- 
shot by  conventional,  abstruse  and  scholastic  dis- 
courses, who  are  refreshed. 


The  Boy  Problem  in  the  Church  173 

Two  or  three  points  are  impressed  upon  me  as 
those  upon  which  present  day  emphasis  is  needed. 
The  occasion  for  the  need  is  in  every  case  a  neglect 
in  the  practice  of  the  home  or  in  the  common  ideals 
of  the  church.     One  of  these  emphases  should  be 
upon  the  Bible.       The  traditionalism  of  our  older 
thinking   made  the   Bible   a   remote   and  unnatural 
book,  while  the  newer  treatment  has  not  become  the 
possession  of  the  layman  sufficiently  to  be  used  in  the 
teaching  of  children.     For  reasons  aside  from  these 
the  Bible  is  neglected.    I  do  not  hnd  that  boys  often 
think  of  it  as  an  attractive  book  or  an  every-day 
book.     Sometimes  they  seem  to  think  it  is  rather  to 
be  ashamed  of  if  one  is  found  carrying  it  or  reading 
it.     Without  diminishing  its  sacredness  we  ought  to 
show  that  it  is  truly  interesting  reading  and  contin- 
ually practical.    To  adorn  its  pages  and  to  own  a  re- 
spectable copy  of  it  will  make  a  boy  feel  differently 
about  it.    He  should  see  it  as  a  varied  literature,  as 
sixty-six  books  rather  than  as  one,  as  story-book  and 
daily  hand-book.    He  should  know  it  in  the  modern 
language    of   *'the   Twentieth    Century   New   Testa- 
ment."    He  should  be  taught  to  test  it  by  modern 
biography  and  daily  practice  in  ethics.    It  should  be- 
come more  vital  that  Jesus  may  be  more  vital  to  him. 
No  more  crying  need  exists  in  the  Church  than 
that  of  missionary  instruction  for  children.     I  con- 
sider that  the  whole  future  of  its  home  and  foreign 
departments  depends  upon  its  relation  to  childhood. 
The  whole  problem  of  missions  consists  in  training 


174  T^he  Boy   Problem 

up  future  givers.  We  are  worrying  about  the  consoli- 
dation of  our  too-many  societies,  our  "Twentieth 
Century  Funds"  and  our  "Forward  Movements/'  and 
especially  about  our  depleted  treasuries,  the  occasion 
of  all  the  rest,  when  the  real  lack  is  the  fundamental 
one  of  interest.  We  have  by  each  mail  some  new 
form  of  literature  intended  to  increase  interesf,  but  its 
statements  and  appeals  are  not  calculated  to  arouse 
interest  where  it  did  not  always  exist,  and  it  goes  to 
the  same  place  where  the  literature  of  similar  appear- 
ance and  illustration,  the  patent  medicine  circular, 
goes — the  waste  basket.  We  have  missionary  secre- 
taries, who  may  either  bore  us  with  their  annals  and 
figures  or  melt  us  to  sentimental  tears  with  their 
touching  tales,  touching  to  the  pocket-book,  pruden- 
tially  emptied  beforehand  of  all  but  lesser  coin,  but 
so  little  touching  the  intelligence  that  we  often  forget 
to  what  cause  we  have  been  giving.  Now  this  arous- 
ing of  interest  should  be  all  done  before  adolescence 
closes,  for  at  that  time  closes  our  keenest;  memory 
for  facts,  the  most  permanent  impression  made  upon 
the  emotions  and  the  formation  of  the  ideals.  It  is  a 
dreary  country  through  which  one  travels  who  seeks 
to  find  a  missionary  literature  that  children  will  read, 
manuals  of  instruction  that  are  practicable  and  other 
methods  of  exciting  attention  that  are  interesting.  We 
need  in  our  Sunday-schools  and  in  our  lesson  system 
so  to  incorporate  missionary  teaching  that  it  shall 
take  the  dignity  and  importance  of  the  revealed 
Word  itself.    When  I  speak  of  "missionary  teaching" 


The  Boy  Problem  in   the   Church  175 

1  include  social  progress.  It  is  a  narrow,  jealous 
church  that  gives  information  only  of  its  own  little 
denominational  "boards"  when  all  modern  social 
movements  and  even  current  history  are  equally  por- 
tions of  the  kingdom  of  God.  We  want  in  our  week- 
day organizations  dramatic  and  pictorial  methods 
that  sfiall  enthuse  and  inspire  the  early  love  and  gen- 
erosity of  boys  and  girls  for  the  great  world-causes. 
Our  greatest  need  here  of  course  is  that  the  home 
should  originate  this  enthusiasm.  Perhaps  if  we  be- 
gin with  the  children  now — not  in  mournful  little  mis- 
sionary societies  presided  over  by  forlorn  and  lonely 
workers,  but  in  the  central  educational  institute  of 
the  church  and  with  an  adequate  literature  to  take 
the  place  of  the  literature  wasted  upon  adults — per- 
haps we  shall  have  fathers  and  mothers  some  day 
who  will  do  more  of  this  themselves. 

We  need,  too,  to  emphasize  that  rehgion  is  service. 
To  gather  children  when  they  ought  to  be  helping 
their  mothers  or  studying  their  lessons  is  unchristian. 
To  foster  a  desire  to  be  good  without  being  good  for 
something  is  mischievous.  To  create  a  committee 
tor  the  purpose  of  watching  its  chairman  do  its  work 
is  an  American  fau^t  not  confined  to  children's  so- 
cieties. It  is  also  paralyzing  to  a  child  to  be  set  to  do 
\  work  that  he  knows  very  well  is  not  worth  doing.  It 
is  the  supreme  duty  and  privilege  of  the  helper  of 
boys  to  give  him  the  very  highest  inspirations  pos- 
sible to  the  soul  and  then  to  do  the  difficult  thing  of 
making  them  applicable  to  that  hodden,  gray,  hofne- 
spun  stuff  called  Duty. 


176  The   Boy   Problem 

It  is  my  own  habit,  as  a  pastor,  to  enrol  my  Sun- 
day-school in  divisions  in  the  order  of  maturity,  and 
to  endeavlor  that  none  shall  pass  into  or  through  ad- 
olescence without  my  personal  attention.  The  num- 
ber in  that  period  at  once  may  not  be  very  large,  but 
it  embraces  in  a  very  few  years  all  the  children  in  the 
church  at  their  most  susceptible  age.  I  visit  the 
homes  and  schools  of  these  cli51dren  for  conference 
and  information  as  often  as  possible.  As  soon  as  cold 
weather  approaches  I  gather  them  in  informal  groups 
after  school  or  Saturdays,  for  activities,  not  pre- 
viously announced,  varying  each  year,  in  short 
courses  and  conducted  as  much  as  possible  out-of- 
doors  and  at  home.  I  hav^  been  doing  the  only 
strictly  religious  work,  outside  of  the  preaching  and 
securing  for  them  the  best  teachers  in  the  Sunday- 
school,  just  before  Easter  in  the  form  of  free  Sunday- 
afternoon  conferences.  I  rely  almost  entirely  upon 
real  friendships  thus  created,  a  mutual  enjoyment  of 
the  society  of  each  other,  coordination  with  the 
home,  carefully  cherished  loyalty  to  the  church  and 
salvation  by  displacement.  I  believe  it  to  be  impor- 
tant to  gain  this  friendship  early  in  adolescence  and  to 
regain  it  by  earnest  tact  in  that  trying  period  of  inde- 
pendence and  change  which  precedes  reconstruction, 
at  16  to  18.  It  is  at  this  latter  time  that  the  pastor 
needs  to  give  most  personal  care  to  his  young  peo- 
ple's societies,  which,  conducted  by  others  and  by 
methods  possibly  not  adaptable  to  boys  of  that  age, 
sadly  lose  those  who  most  need  to  be  held.    At  12 


The   Boy  Problem  in  the  Church  177 

and  at  16  are  the  points  for  personal  work,  the  for- 
mer for  acquaintance  and  association,  the  latter  for 
meeting  restlessness  and  doubt.  This  latter  is  the 
"Emigration  Period"  of  life,  corresponding  perhaps 
in  the  race-life  to  the  fruitful  years  of  the  discoverers 
and  pioneers.  In  general,  I  try  to  enrich  the  lives  of 
the  boys  as  much  as  possible,  to  be  of  real  service  to 
them  and  to  know  and  love  them.  I  become  so 
much  interested  in  studying  them  and  in  learning 
from  them,  the  only  true  friends  that  one  in  maturity 
is  ever  sure  of,  that  I  scarcely  ever  think  of  myself 
as  their  teacher,  except  in  the  pulpit,  where  I  always 
find  before  me  many  eager,  boyish  faces. 

As  for  results,  I  give  no  figures.  I  find  that  a  con- 
siderable group  of  young  people  always  offer  them- 
selves to  the  church  as  fast  as  they  mature,  coming 
spontaneously  and  together.  I  have  had  mothers 
come  to  me  and  tell  me  with  emotion  that  their  boys 
were  changed  in  their  conduct  at  home,  and  this  was 
testimony  of  the  most  satisfying  character.  I  have 
seen  some  of  these  changes  with  my  own  eyes  and 
have  watched  young  men  go  out  into  life  feeling  that 
my  touch  had  been  in  their  moulding. 

It  is  intensive  work.  Sometimes  it  seems  to  be 
small  in  its  reach  and  grasp.  One  holds  but  a  few 
among  so  many.  Yet  another  Teacher  was  content 
to  have  twelve  disciples.  And  in  every  group,  in 
Sunday-school,  Y.  M.  C.  A.  or  boys'  club,  there  are  ^ 
always  a  few  key-boys.  If  you  master  them  you  have 
mastered  all.     It  takes  but  a  few  years  of  this  kind 


--    / 


178  The  Boy  Problem 

of  work  to  make  a  man  unwilling  to  do  any  other.  To 
become  an  artist  in  spirit-building  is  to  write  poems 
and  paint  pictures  not  for  dusty  libraries  or  quiet  gal- 
leries but  for  millenniums  of  benediction. 

My  message  is  really  this:  We  must  rely  less  upon 
scheming  and  method  and  cease  to  look  for  the 
prophet  of  a  miracle  movement  that  shall  solve  our 
problem.  In  home  and  community  and  church  we 
shall  save  our  boys  as  Jesus  did  the  world,  by  incar- 
nation. For  them  we  must  go  down  into  the  Galilee 
of  simple-heartedness  and  the  Samaria  of  common- 
place and  dwell  at  the  Nazareth  of  childish  toil  and 
struggle  and  kneel  in  the  Gethsemane  of  intercession, 
yea,  and  climb  the  sacrificial  mound  of  Calvary,  as 
did  the  fathers  and  mothers  and  saints  of  old,  to  bring 
them  to  God  and  to  form  in  them  the  eternal  life  of  a 
new  creation. 


A    DIRECTORY    OF    SOCIAL    ORGANIZA- 
TIONS  FOR   BOYS 

This  is  not  a  list  of  all  the  kinds  of  boys'  clubs  in 
America,  but  of  the  typical  ones.  It  is  more  than  a 
list  of  boys'  clubs,  for  it  includes  many  social  instru- 
mentaHties  that  are  not  exactly  clubs  or  for  boys 
alone.  An  effort  is  made  in  each  case  to  describe  the 
literature  and  give  the  address  of  some  one  to  whom 
to  send  for  further  information.  A  rough  classifica- 
tion is  made  for  convenience,  although  many  forms 
of  work  really  fall  into  several  of  the  classes. 

CIVIC    AND    PATRIOTIC    SOCIETIES 

The  Boys'  Orderly  and  The  Hale  House  Republic, 
Hale  House,  Boston.  See  Annual  Report  and  The 
Hale  House  Log. 

The  City  History  Clubs,  founded  by  Mrs.  Robert 
Abbe,  President.  Normal  Teacher,  Frank  Bergen 
Kelle(y,  Ph.D.,  23  W.  44th  St.,  N.  Y.  City,  from 
whom  various  pamphlets  may  be  obtained. 

The  Gill  School  City,  founded  by  Wilson  L.  Gill, 
230  W.  13th  St.,  N.  Y.  City. 

The  George  Junior  Republic,  William  R.  George, 
founder,  Freeville,  N.  Y.    Report,  25  cents. 

The  Junior  League  for  Street  Cleaning.  David 
Willard,  Children's  House,  New  York  City,  and  Mrs. 
A.  Emmagene  Paul,  Chicago. 


i8o  The  Boy  Problem 

The  Junior  Americans,  H.  Howard  Pepper,  Jack- 
son Ave.  Chapel,  Providence,  R.  I. 

The  Miniature  Election  System  of  the  Boys'  Free 
Reading  Room,  112-114  University  Place,  N.  Y. 
City.     Write  George  Hamilton  Dean,  Chairman. 

The  Children  of  the  Revolution  and  the  various 
genealogical  and  patriotic  societies  and  clubs. 

The  Boys'  U.  S.  A.  William  Byron  Forbush,  Win- 
throp  Church,  Boston. 

COUNTRY    CLUBS 

The  Andover  Play  School,  Geo,  E.  Johnson,  Uni- 
versity School,  Cleveland,  O.,  founder  and  superin- 
tendent.    See  his  articles  in  the  Bibliography. 

ETHICAL    SOCIETIES 

Mercy.  The  Bands  of  Mercy.  George  T.  Angell, 
19  Milk  St.,  Boston,  President.  Condensed  informa- 
tion, 8  pp.,  free.    A  large  list  of  literature. 

Our  Animal  Protective  League.  Write  to  Arthur 
Westcott,  Official  Lecturer,  United  Charities  Build- 
ing, N.  Y.  City,  for  free  circular. 

Purity.  The  Knights  of  the  Silver  Cross,  auxiliary 
to  the  White  Cross  Society,  224  Waverley  Place,  N.. 
Y.  City. 

The  Order  of  the  Silver  Cross  of  Our  Master  and 
Geanness,  Rev.  W.  W.  Moir,  Lake  Placid,  N.  Y. 
"Some  Things  That  Trouble  Young  Manhood"  is  a 
book  of  sensible  addresses  delivered  to  the  Order,  to 
be  had  of  Mr.  Moir. 

Temperance.     The  Band  of  Hope.     Write  the  Na- 


Directory  of  Organizations  i8i 

tional  Temperance  Society,  58  Reade  St.,  N.  Y.  City, 
for  catalogue  and  samples. 

The  Juvenile  Good  Templars,  Sons  of  Temperance, 
Temple  of  Honor,  Royal  Templars  of  Temperance  all 
have  their  literature,  but  are  best  studied  from  their 
local  branches. 

The  Loyal  Temperance  Legion.  Send  25  cents  to 
Woman's  Temperance  PubUshing  Association,  The 
Temple,  La  Salle  St.,  Chicago,  for  "Questions  An- 
swered."    Organizer's  outiit,  89  cents. 

The  Church  Temperance  Legion,  consisting  of 
The  Order  of  the  Knights  of  Temperance,  for  boys 
14  to  21,  and  the  Order  of  Young  Crusaders,  Rev. 
Melville  K.  Bailey,  Secretary.  Handbook  of  the 
Church  (P.  E.)  Temperance  Society,  Church  Missions 
House,  N.  Y.  City. 

Savings.  The  Stamp  Saving  Society,  5  Park  Sq., 
Boston,  have  a  free  circular  and  will  send  a  sample 
stamp  book.     The  mass  clubs  use  pass-books. 

GROUP  CLUBS 

(Intensive  work,  primarily  in  Social  Settlements) 
The  Qubs  at  Lincoln  House,  1 18-122  Shawmut 
Ave.,  and  South  End  House,  6  Rollins  St.,  Boston, 
Chicago  Commons  and  Hull  House,  Chicago,  Neigh- 
borhood Guild,  26  Delancey  St.,  N.  Y.  City,  and 
Kingsley  House,  Pittsburg,  Pa.,  are  commended. 
Their  annual  reports  may  be  sent  for.  Mr.  William 
A.  Clark,  Gordon  House,  New  York,  is  authority, 
and  his  Social  Monographs  will  be  text-books  of  the 
work. 


i82  The  Boy   Problem 

HANDIWORK  CLUBS 

The  Captains  of  Ten,  Miss  A.  B.  Mackintire,  51 
Avon  Hill  St.,  No.  Cambridge,  Mass.,  founder.  Miss 
Mackintire  has  a  handbook  in  preparation. 

The  Andover  Play  School. 

The  Lincoln  House  Play- Work  Guild. 

HERO-LOVE  METHODS 

The  Knights  of  King  Arthur.  William  Byron  For- 
bush,  founder,  and  Mage  Merlin.  Handbook,  50 
cents;  Men  of  To-Morrow,  $1  a  year,  its  organ,  Al- 
bany, N.  Y.  Rev.  Frank  L.  Masseck,  National  King 
Arthur,  Spencer,  Mass.,  answers  all  questions  and 
supplies  new^  Castles. 

The  Reord  of  Virtue  Contest.  Write  Geo.  Ham- 
ilton Dean,  as  above. 

Tlie  Hero  Scrap  Book.  Write  E.  L.  Hunt,  Bunk- 
er Hill  Boys'  Club,  Boston. 

HOME  METHODS 

The  Home  Library  System,  Charles  W.  Birtwell, 
Supt.  of  the  Children's  Aid  Socidty,  Boston,  founder. 

The  Home  Department  of  the  Sunday-school,  W. 
A.  Duncan,  Ph.  D.,  14  Beacon  St.,  Boston,  President 
of  the  International  Society. 

LITERARY  METHODS 

The  Amateur  Newspaper  Leagues  of  Boys. 

The  Home  Library  System. 

The  League  of  Social  Service,  W,  H.  Tolman,  sec- 
retary, 287  Fourth  Ave.,  N.  Y.  City,  desires  to  en- 
courage and  federate  debating  clubs. 


Directory  of  Organisations  183 

MASS   CLUBS 

(Extensive  work:   usually  in  large  cities) 
For  typical  examples  send  for  the  handbooks  of  the 
following  clubs: 

The  Good  Will  Club,  Hartford,  Conn.,  Miss  Mary 

Hall,  founder  and  superintendent  (the  1900  report  is 

elaborately  illustrated). 

The   Fall   River   Boys'   Club,   Fall   River,   Mass., 

Nk5^os.    Chew,    superintendent    (1800    members;    Mr. 

/Chew  is  the  authority  on  this  kind  of  work). 

The  Bunker  Hill  Boys'  Club,  Charlestown,  Bos- 
ton, Frank  S.  Mason,  founder  and  secretary  (a  fine 
work  with  meager  equipment). 

PERIODICALS,  CLUBS  FOR  SUBSCRIBERS  TO 

(The  best  of  many  good  ones) 
The  Order  of  the  American  Boy,  for  subscribers  to 
The  American   Boy,   William    C.   Sprague,    Majestic 
Building,  Detroit,  Mich.     "The  cultivation  of  manli- 
ness in  mind,  manners  and  morals." 

The  St.  Nicholas  League,  for  subscribers  to  St. 
Nicholas,  Union  Square,  N.  Y.  City.  "Live  to  learn 
and  learn  to  live." 

The  Success  Qubs,  for  subscribers  to  Success,  Uni- 
versity Building,  Washington  Square,  N.  Y.  City. 
"Don't  wait  for  your  opportunity.     Make  it." 

PHILANTHROPIC   SOCIETIES 

The  Ten  Times  One  Society  (Lend  a  Hand  Clubs), 
Mrs.  Bernard  Whitman,  i  Beacon  St.,  Boston,  secre- 
tary. The  Lend  a  Hand  Record,  50  cents  a  year,  is 
the  organ. 


184  The  Boy   Problem 

PHYSICAL   TRAINING   METHODS 

The  Boys'  Brotherhood  of  Philadelphia,  Dr.  Edwin 
J.  Houston,  1809  Spring  Garden  St.,  Philadelphia, 
founder  and  president.  Circular  and  constitution 
free. 

The  United  Boys'  Brigade  of  America,  Lancaster, 
Pa.     The  Brigade  Boy,  50  cents  a  year,  organ. 

Boys'  Camps.  See  articles  by  E.  M.  Robinson  in 
the  Bibliography. 

RELIGIOUS  METHODS 

The  Boys'  Department  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  E.  M. 
Robinson,  3  W.  29th  St.,  N.  Y.  City,  is  International 
Secretary  for  boys  and  will  answer  inquiries.  Asso- 
ciation Boys,  50  cents  a  year,  the  organ. 

The  Junior  Brotherhood  of  St.  Andrew,  Hubert 
Carleton,  Carnegie  Building,  Pittsburg,  Pa.  St.  An- 
drew's Cross,  the  organ. 

The  Boys'  and  Junior  Brotherhood  of  Andrew  and 
Phillip,  Rev.  J.  Garland  Hamner,  Jr.,  secretary,  New- 
ark, N.  J.  The  Brotherhood  Star,  the  organ.  Hand- 
book, 5  cents. 

The  Knights  of  St.  Paul,  auxihary  to  the  Brother- 
hood of  St.  Paul,  Rev.  F.  D.  Leete,  Rochester,  N.  Y., 
founder  and  organizer. 

The  International  Order  of  the  Kings  (Daughters 
and)  Sons,  Mrs.  I.  C.  Davis,  156  Fifth  .Ave.,  N.  Y, 
City,  secretary.  Free  sample  literature;  The  Silver 
Cross,  the  organ. 

The  Junior  Bible  Union  of  Bethany  Church,  R.  S. 
Murphy,  teacher,  2313   St.  Albans  Place,   Philadel- 


Directory  of  Organizations  185 

phia,  has  suggestive  plans  and  literature ;  it  is  a  big, 
thoroughly  organized  Bible  class  for  boys. 

The  Junior  and  Intermediate  Christian  Endeavbr 
Societies,  John  Willis  Baer,  secretary,  Tremont  Tem- 
ple, Boston.  Free  Information.  "The  Junior  Man- 
ual" by  Amos  R.  Wells,  75  cents.  The  Junior  C.  E. 
World,  the  organ. 

The  Junior  Epworth  League,  Mrs.  Annie  E. 
Smiley,  Lowell,  Mass.,  secretary.  The  handbook  is 
*'Work  and  Workers,"  40  cents. 

The  Baptist  Young  People's  Union,  Rev.  E.  E. 
Olivers,  secretary,  324  Dearborn  St.,  Chicago.  The 
Baptist  Union,  the  organ. 

The  Luther  League,  headquarters.  Box  133,  Wash- 
ington, D.  C.     The  Luther  League  Review,  the  organ. 

Young  People's  Christian  Union  (United  Breth- 
ren), Rev.  H.  F.  Shupe,  secretary.  Handbook,  10 
cents,  of  E.  L.  Shuey,  Dayton,  Ohio. 

Young  People's  Christian  Union  (Universalist), 
Rev.  A.  J.  Cardall,  secretary,  799  Broadway,  South 
Boston.     Onward,  the  organ. 

The  Knights  of  King  Arthur. 

The  Pauline  Brotherhood  (UniversaHst),  Rev.  O. 
M.  Hilton,  Auburn,  N.  Y.,  secretary. 

The  Guild  of  Bible  Illuminators,  S.  Brainerd  Pratt, 
president,  Buckland,  Mass. 

Catcchctics.  Rev.  W.  J.  Mutch,  Ph.  D.,  New 
Haven,  Conn.;  Rev.  John  L.  Keedy,  Walpole,  Mass.; 
Rev.  Doremus  Scudder,  D.  D.,  care  of  the  American 
Board,  Boston,  Mass.;  Rev.  A.  W.  Hitchcock,  Wor- 


i86  The  Boy   Problem 

cester,  Mass. ;  M.  C.  Hazard,  Ph.  D.,  Boston,  Mass. ; 
Rev.  W.  R.  Campbell,  Roxbury,  Mass.;  Rev.  I.  C. 
Smart,  Pittsfield,  Mass.;  Rev.  J.  W.  Cooper,  D.  D., 
New  Britian,  Corm.;  Rev.  Asher  Anderson,  Boston, 
Mass.;  Rev.  Thos.  Chalmers,  Manchester,  N.  H.; 
Rev.  W.  F.  English,  Ph.  D.,  Windsor,  Conn. ;  Rev. 
G.  W.  Fiske,  So,  Hadley  Falls,  Mass.,  are  all  Congre- 
gationalists  who  have  written  manuals,  which  they 
sell  from  5  to  15  ceuts  each.  Dr.  Scudder's  has  a 
bibliography. 

Missionary  Societies.  The  Boys'  and  Girls'  Home 
Missionary  Army  (Congregational),  Rev.  J.  B.  Clark, 
D.  D.,  United  Charities  Building,  N.  Y.  City,  secre- 
tary. 

The  Koo-Koo  Circle,  Mrs.  J.  C.  Entwistle,  Salem, 
Mass.  A  unique  combination  of  love  for  animals  and 
for  missions. 

The  Captains  of  Ten  combines  missions  with  handi- 
work. 

The  Sunday- School  Handbooks.  The  Bible  School 
by  Rev,  A.  H.  McKinney,  Ph.  D.,  also  the  manuals 
of  Dunning,  Foster,  Schauffler  and  the  compilation 
published  by  The  Sunday  School  Times.  None  but  Mc- 
Kinney's  have  the  latest  views.  Of  courses  suitable 
for  boys  the  following  are  recommended:  Heroes  of 
the  Old  Testament,  published  by  the  Bible  Study 
Union,  Boston.  The  Life  of  Christ  for  Boys'  Bible 
Classes,  and  Men  of  the  Bible,  by  W.  H.  Davis,  with 
blue  print  supplements,  and  Bailey  on  The  Black- 
board  in   the   Sunday-school   and   Maltby    on   Map 


Directory  of  Organizations  187 

Modeling  are  all  furnished  by  the  International  Com- 
mittee of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  3  West  29th  Street,  New 
York  City.  Moulton's  Bible  Stories  in  "The  Modern 
Reader's  Bible." 

Junior  Bible  Lessons  (Old  Testament  Heroes)  by 
Rev.  William  J.  Mutch,  Ph.  D.,  New  Haven,  Conn., 
Christian  Culture,  publishers. 

SCIENCE  STUDY  METHODS 

The  Agassiz  Association,  H.  H.  Ballard,  founder 
and  president,  Pittsfield,  Mass.  The  handbook, 
"Three  Kingdoms,"  75  cents.  Total  cost  to  form  a 
chapter  is  $1.75.    The  American  Boy,  organ. 

The  Order  of  the  Rainbow,  Hale  House,  Boston, 
(includes  other  things  also). 

SECRET  SOCIETIES 

The  author  is  unable  to  recommend  any  of  the 
secret  orders  for  boys. 

SOCIAL   SOCIETIES 

The  Circulating  Game  Plan,  devised  by  Charles 
\V.  Birtwell  to  accompany  the  Home  Libraries. 

The  Play  Work  Guild  and  Play  School. 

The  "Callings"  Clubs  of  the  Fall  River  Boys'  Club. 
See  its  Tenth  Annual  Report. 

FELLOWSHIPS   OF  ADULTS  TO   HELP  BOYS 

The  Men  of  To-morrow :  The  General  Alliance  of 
Workers  with  Boys,  WilHam  Byron  Forbush,  presi- 
dent, Winthrop  Church,  Boston;  Frank  S.  Mason, 
secretary,  Charlestown,  Boston;  How  to  Help  BoySj 
$1  a  year,  its  organ. 


1 88  The  Boy  Problem 

The  Association  of  Organized  Work  With  Boys  (oi 
New  York  City).  Luther  Gulick,  president,  Pratt  In- 
stitute, Brooklyn;  Geo.  Hamilton  Dean,  secretary, 
114  University  Place,  New  York  City. 

The  Eastern  Alliance  of  Workers  with  Boys.  Miss 
Isabel  A.  Winslow,  Hale  House,  Boston,  chairman  of 
executive  committee. 

Also  the  Brotherhoods  named  above  and  the  In- 
ternational Boys'  Work  Committee  of  the  Y.  M.  C. 
A.,  J.  H.  Canfield,  LL.  D.,  Chairman. 

SCHOOLS    WHERE   LEADERS    OF   WORK    WITH    BOYS    ARE 
TRAINED 

Clark  University,  Worcester,  trains  specialists  in 
child-study. 

The  Bible  Normal  College,  Hartford,  Conn.,  has  a 
course  for  Boys'  Club  Directors. 

The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Training  School,  Springfield, 
Mass.,  trains  secretaries  of  Boys'  Departments  of 
the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  physical  instructors  and  superin- 
tendents of  camps  and  vacation  schools. 

The  Teacher's  College  of  Columbia  University. 

The  Bible  Teacher's  College,  N.  Y.  City. 


A   BIBLIOGRAPHY   OF   BOOKS   AND    PAM- 
PHLETS  RELATING  TO  BOYS   AND 
SOCIAL    WORK    WITH    THEM 

This  is  not  a  bibliography  of  the  whole  subject,  but 
a  list  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  works  in  English  each 
of  which  the  author  believes  to  be  the  most  helpful 
upon  its  own  special  topic.  Behind  this  Hst  lies  the 
whole  literature  of  anthropology,  psychology  and 
pedagogy.  The  standard  bibliography  of  child  study 
is  that  by  Louis  N.  Wilson,  librarian  of  Clark  Univer- 
sity, published  by  G.  E.  Stechert,  9  East  Sixteenth 
Street,  New  York  City,  with  annual  supplements 
published  at  the  University.  The  literature  of  the 
different  societies  and  clubs  for  boys  is  referred  to 
under  the  name  of  each  organization  in  the  Directory 
published  herewith. 

ON    ADOLESCENT    BOYHOOD 

Baldwin,  J.  M.  "Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  the 
Race."    New  York.     1895. 

Barnes,  Earl.  "A  Study  of  Children's  Interests." 
Studies  in  Education.  {Stanford  University.)  Vol.  I.  Palo 
Alto.    1896-97. 

Bohannon.  E.  "A  Study  of  Peculiar  and  Exceptional 
Children."  Pedagogical  Seminary.  Vol.  IV.  Worcester. 
1896. 

"The  Only  Child  in  a  Family."    Ibid.     Vol.  V. 

1898. 

Bryan,  E.  B.  "Nascent  Stages  and  their  Pedagogical  Sig- 
nificance."   Ibid.    Vol.  VII.    No.  3.    Oct.,  1900. 


190  The  Boy  Problem 

BuRK,     F.      "Teasing    and     Bullying."      Ibid.      Vol.     IV. 
1897. 
^    BuRNHAM,    W.    H.     "The   Study   of   Adolescence."     Ibid. 
Vol.  I.     1891. 

Chamberlain,    A.    F.      "The    Child."     New    York.      1900. 

Chrisman,  O.  "Religious  Periods  of  Child  Growth." 
Educational  Reznew.     Vol.  XVI.     New  York.   1898. 

CoE,  George  A.  "Adolescence — The  Religious  Point  of 
View."  Journal  of  Childhood  and  Adolescence.  Vol.  II. 
No.  I.     January,  1902.     Seattle. 

Daniels,  A.  H.  "The  New  Life:  A  Study  of  Regenera- 
tion." American  Journal  of  Psychology.  Vol.  VI.  Wor- 
cester.    1893. 

Darrah,  Estelle  M.  "A  Study  of  Children's  Ideals." 
Popular  Science  Monthly.     Vol.  LIII.     1898. 

Dawson,  George  E.  "A  Study  in  Youthful  Degeneracy." 
Pedagogical  Seminary.     Vol.  IV.     No.  2.     1896. 

"Psychic  Rudiments  and  Morality."  Ameri- 
can Journal  of  Psychology.    Vol.  IX.    1900. 

"Children's  Interest  in  the  Bible."    Pedagogical 

Seminary.  Vol.  III.  No.  2.  1900.  These  three  papers 
may  be  obtained,  in  reprints,  of  the  author,  Bible  Normal 
College,  Hartford,  Conn. 

Gould,  E.  M.  "Child  Fetiches."  Pedagogical  Seminary. 
Vol.  V.     1898. 

Gulick,  Luther.  "Sex  and  Religion."  Association  Out- 
look.   Springfield,  Mass.     1897-98. 

and    Others.      "The    Religion    of    Boys."     Ibid. 

1898-99.  The  standard  study  of  the  topic.  Now  being 
printed,  revised,  in  Association  Boys,  1902. 

Hall,  G.  Stanley.     "Adolescence."     (Forthcoming,  1902.) 

^ "Boy  Life  in  a  Massachusetts  Country  Town  a 

Quarter  of  a  Century  Ago."  Proceedings  of  the  American 
Antiquarian  Society.     Vol.  VII.     Worcester.     1891. 

"Children's  Collections."  Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary.   Vol.  I.    1891. 


Bibliography  191 

"A    Study   of    Fears."      American   Journal    of 

Psychology.    Vol.  VIII.     1897. 

»^  James,  William.  "The  Principles  of  Psychology."  New 
York.  1899.  The  chapters  on  "Habit"  and  "Will"  are  fa- 
mous. 

Johnson,  J.  H.  "The  Savagery  of  Boyhood."  Popular 
Science  Monthly.    Vol,  XXXI.     1887. 

Kline,  L.  W.  "Truancy  as  Related  to  the  Migratory  In- 
stinct."   Pedagogical  Seminary,    Vol.  V.     1898. 

RowE,  S.  H.  "The  Physical  Nature  of  the  Child."  New 
York.     1899. 

Starbuck,  E.  D.  "The  Psychology  of  Religion."  New 
York.     1899. 

Street,  J.  R.  "The  Religion  of  Childhood.  Eton's  Her- 
ald.   January  24,  1899.    Gives  the  genetic  view. 

Tabor,  Arthur  O.  "The  Country  Boy."  How  to  Help 
Boys.    Vol.  II.     No.  i.    January,  1902.     Boston. 

VosTROVSKY,  Clara.  "A  Study  of  Children's  Superstitions." 
Studies  in  Education.    Vol.  I.     1896-7. 

YoDER,  A.  H.  "A  Study  of  the  Boyhood  of  Great  Men." 
Pedagogical  Seminary.    Vol.  IV.     No.  i.    1896. 

"The    Tncorrigibles'."     Journal    of    Childhood 

and  Adolescence.    Vol.   II.    No.  i.    January,  1902. 

ON     SPECIAL     METHODS     FOR    WORK     WITH 
BOYS 

Camps. — Alexander,  Thornton  S.  "Camps  for  Boys." 
Social  Work  Monographs.  No.  2.  Confined  to  a  narrow 
view  of  American  camps. 

Robinson,  E.  M.     "Boys  as  Savages."     Association  Out- 
look.   July,  1899. 

"Thinkerettes  about   Boys   and  Camps."     Ibid. 

August,  1899. 
Shaw,  Albert.     "Vacation  Camps  and  Boys'  Republics." 
Review  of  Rewiews.    May,  1896,' 
Child-Saving     Work. — Fox,     Hugh     F.       "Child-Saving 


192  The  Boy  Problem 

Agencies."     How  to  Help   Boys.     Vol.   II.   No.   i.     January, 
1902. 

Gardens. — Knight,  Geo.  H.  "Gardens  for  School 
Children."  How  to  Help  Boys.  Vol.  II.  No.  i.  Jan- 
uary, 1902. 

Report  of  the  Consuls  of  the  United  States  on  School  Gar- 
dens in  Europe,  issued  by  the  Board  of  Foreign  Commerce, 
Department  of  State,  Washington.    Vol.  XX.    Part  2.    1900. 
Mattox,  a.  H.     "Boys'  Garden  School  of  the  N.  C.  R. 
Co."     Social  Service.    Vol.  V.     No.  7.    January,    1902. 
Handicraft. — "Lincoln    House    Manual."      1900-1902,    Bos- 
ton, and   "A   Scheme  of  Handicraft"  by  William  A.   Clark, 
Social    Monographs,     forthcoming,     furnish     an     outline     of 
methods  and  a  list  of  handbooks. 

Institutions. — Reeder,  R.   R.     "The  Training  of  Children 

in  Institutions."  Charities.  Vol.  VIII.   No.  5.  February  i,  1902. 

Outdoor    Philanthropies. — "Outdoor    Philanthropies" :     a 

symposium.     How  to  Help  Boys.     Vol.  II.     No.  i.     January, 

1902. 

Leadership. — Mason,  Frank  S.  "The  Boys'  Club  Leader." 
How  to  Help  Boys.    Vol.  I.    No.  i.    1900. 

Robinson,    E.    M.      "The    Present    Need."     Association 
Men.    June,  1900. 
Pictures. — Bailey,  Henry  T.    "The  Blackboard  in  Sunday- 
school."     Boston.     1900. 
Emery,  M.  S.     "How  to  Enjoy  Pictures."     Boston.     1898. 
Police    Court    Work. — Northrop, ':E.    N.      "Police    Court 
Work  for  Boys."    How  to  Help  Boysi-    Vol.  I.  No.  2.     Jan- 
uary, 1901. 

Rural  Problem,  The. — Pressey,  Edward  P.  "Solution  of 
the  Country  Problem."     Montague,  Mass.     1901. 

Savings. — Northrop,  E.  N.  "Helping  Boys  to  Save."  How 
to  Help  Boys.    Vol.  I.    No.  i.    1900. 

Sex-Information. — Lyttleton,  E.  "The  Instruction  of  the 
Young  in  Sex-Knowledge."  International  Journal  of  Ethics. 
July,  1899. 


Bibliography  193 

Meyer,  R  B.  "A  Holy  Temple."  Philadelphia.  1901. 
MoRLEY,  Margaret  W.  "Life  and  Love."  Chicago.  1895. 
Wilder,  Burt  G.    "What  Young  People  Should  Know." 

Boston.     1875. 
Wood-Allen,  Mary.    "Almost  a  Man."    Ann  Arbor.  1895. 
"Sex-Instruction  of  Boys" :    ten  papers  in  How  to  Help 
Boys.     Vol.  L    No.  4.     1901. 
Settlement  Work. — Weeks,  Nathan  H.    "The  Settlement 
Method    with    Boys."      CongregationalisL     January    11,    1902. 
Socials. — Smiley,  Annie  E.    "Fifty  Social  Evenings."    Two 
Series.     New  York.    1894-96. 

Wells,    Amos    R.      "Social    Evenings."      Boston.      1898. 

"Social  to  Save."    Boston.    1900. 

Stories. — Vostrovsky,  Clara.  "A  Study  of  Children's  Own 
Stories."     Studies  in  Education.     Vol.   L      1896-97. 

Wiltse,  Sara  E.    "The  Place  of  the  Story  in  Education." 

Boston.     1897. 
Burr,  Henry  M.      "The  Boy  as  an  Idealist."     How   to 
Help  Boys.     January,  1902. 
Vacation    Schools. — Reports    of    the    Committees    of    the 
Board  of  Education,  Boston,  on  Vacation  Schools  and  Play- 
grounds, 1901. 

Reports  of  the  Massachusetts  Civic  League  for  1902. 
Report    of   the    Home    Garden    Association    of   the    Public 
Schools  of  Springfield,  for  1900. 

The  Playground  in  Seward  Park,  by  C.  B.  Stover,  in  Vol. 
VI,  No.  18,  of  Charities,  May,  1901. 

Articles  on  Preventive  Work,  by  Joseph  Lee,  in  Charities. 
from  November,  1900,  to  July  6,  1901. 
Reports  of  the  Outdoor  Recreation  League  of  New  York. 
Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Emergency  and  Hygiene  As- 
sociation for  1901. 

Reports  of  the  Board  of  Education  of  the  City  of  New 
York  for  1901 : — On  Vacation  Schools  and  Playgrounds ;  On 
Gymnastics  and  Athletics ;  on  Courses  of  Study  for  Vacation 
Schools;  On  Games  and  Songs  for  the  Kindergarten  Depart' 
ment  of  the  Summer  Playgrounds. 


194  The  Boy  Problem 

Report  of  the  Board  of  Commissioners  of  the  Department  of 
Parks,  Boston,  for  1901. 

Report  of  the  Committee  on  Vacation   Schools  and  Play- 
grounds, for  1901,  published  by  the  Boston  Board  of  Educa- 
tion. 
Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Civic  League,  Boston,  1902. 
Report  of  the  Home  Gardening  Association  of  the  Public 
Schools,  Cleveland,   1900. 

Report  of  the  New  York  Association  for  Improving  the 
Condition  of  the  Poor,  for  1896,  on  Vacation  Schools. 

Alexander,  Thornton   S.     "Vacation   Schools."     Social 

Monographs.    No.  4. 
American,  Sadie.    "The  Movement  for  Vacation  Schools." 
The  American  Journal  of  Sociology.     November,  1898. 
Cardozo,  F.  L.  Jr.    "Vacation  Schools."    Education.    No- 
vember, 1901. 
Jones,  Katherine  A.     "Vacation  Schools  in  the  United 
States."    Review  of  Reviezvs.     June,  1898. 
We  may  include  in  this  list,  as  they  are  promised  imme- 
diately,    Mr.  William  A.  Clark's  series  of  Social  Monographs, 
of   which   the    following   titles    are    of    interest   "here:     Boys* 
Clubs,    A    Scheme    of    Handicraft,    Play-Work    for    Clubs, 
Theatricals  for  Clubs. 

ON  BOYS'  ORGANIZATIONS  ORIGINATED  BY  BOYS 

Browne,  T.  J.  "Boys'  Gangs."  Association  Outlook.  Feb- 
ruary, 1899. 

"The   Clan   or   Gang   Instinct   in   Boys."     Ibid. 

June,  July  and  August,   1900. 

CuLiN,  S.  "Street  Games  of  Brooklyn."  Journal  of  Amer- 
ican Folk-Lore.     Vol.   IV.    1891. 

Hall,  G.  Stanley.  "The  Story  of  a  Sand  Pile."  Scrib- 
ner's  Magazine.    Vol.  III.     1888. 

Johnson,  J.  H.  "Rudimentary  Society  among  Boys." 
Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies.  No.  11.  Second  Series. 
1884. 


Bibliography  195 

Riis,  Jacob  A.  "How  the  Other  Half  Lives,"  and  "A  Ten 
Years'  War."    New  York.     1892  and  1900. 

Sheldon,  Henry  D.  "The  Institutional  Activities  of  Amer- 
ican Children."  Reprint  from  American  Journal  of  Psychol- 
ogy.   Vol.    IX.    No.  4.     1899. 

ON   BOYS'   ORGANIZATIONS    ORIGINATED 
BY   ADULTS 

Bacon,  Leonard  Woolsey,  and  Northrop.  Charles  Addi- 
son.    "Young  People's  Societies."    New  York.     1900. 

Birtwell,  Charles  W.     "Home  Libraries."    Boston.     1899. 

Brown,  Lincoln  E.  "The  Ideal  Boys'  Club,"  Scranton, 
Pa.,  1902,  (order  of  Mr.    Brown  at  Wilkesbarre.) 

Chew,  Thomas.  "The  Boys'  Club  Reaching  the  Entire 
Family."    How  to  Help  Boys.     1900. 

"The  Large   City  Boys'   Club."     How  to  Help 

Boys.     No.  2.     1901. 

Clark,  Francis  E.  "The  Children  and  the  Church."  Bos- 
ton.   1887. 

Clark,  William  A.  "Helping  Boys  by  the  Social  Settle- 
nTgnt  Plan."    How  to  Help  Boys.     1900. 

"Lincoln  House  Bulletins."    1899-1901. 

Forbush,  William  Byron.  "The  Boy  Problem."  Third 
Edition.     Boston.     1902. 

"A  Manual  of  Boys'  Clubs."     1898. 

Gladden,  Washington.  "The  Christian  Pastor  and  the 
Working  Church."     New  York.   1898. 

GuLiCK,  Luther.  "The  Future  of  the  Association."  As- 
sociation Outlook.     April,  1900. 

Johnson,  George  E.  "An  Educational  Experiment."  Ped- 
agogical Seminary.     Vol.    VI.     No  4.     1899. 

Mead,  George  W.  "Modern  Methods  of  Church  ^Vork.'* 
New  York.     1897. 

Morgan,  George  W.  "Hebrew  Boys'  Clubs."  Hozv  to 
Help  Boys.    No.  2.    1901. 


196  The  Boy  Problem 

ON   PLAY   AND   GAMES 

Alexander,  Thornton  S.  "School-yard  Play-grounds,"  and 
Allen,  Fred'k  B.  "Summer  Play-grounds."  Social  Work 
Monographs.    No.  3. 

Blount,  H.  M.  "The  Sphere  of  the  Play-ground."  Journal 
of  Pedagogy.    June,  1900. 

^Bradley,  John  E.     "The  Educational  Value  of  Play."    Re- 
view  of  Reviews.  January,  1902. 

Chesley,  a.  M.  "Manual  of  Gymnasium  Games."  New 
York,  1901. 

Croswell,  T.  R.  "Amusements  of  Worcester  School  Chil- 
dren."   Pedagogical  Seminary.     Vol.  VI.    1899. 

Groos,  Karl.  "The  Play  of  Man."  New  York.  1901. 
\/  GuLicK,  Luther.  "Pyschological,  Pedagogical,  and  Relig- 
ious Aspects  of  Group  Games."  Association  Outlook.  Feb- 
ruary, 1900.  Pedagogical  Seminary.  Vol.  VL  No.  2. 
J  Johnson,  George  E.  "Education  by  Plays  and  Games." 
Reprint  from  the  Pedagogical  Seminary.  Vol.  IIL  No.  i. 
1896. 

"Games  and   Play,"  Social  Work  Monographs, 

Boston.     1898. 

"Play  in  Physical  Training."    Address  before  the 

National  Education  Association.     1898. 

"Play    in    Character-Building."      How    to    Help 

Boys.     No.  3.      April,  1901. 

Lee,  Joseph.  "Playground  Education."  Educational  Re- 
view.    December,  1901. 

Newell,  W.  W.  "Games  and  Songs  of  American  Chil- 
dren."    New  York.     1884. 

"Free  Play  in  Physical  Education."  Popular  Science 
Monthly.    Vol.  XLIL     1893. 

"Group  Games."    How  to  Help  Boys.    No.  5.    October,  1901. 

Various  handbooks  of  games  mentioned  in  Johnson's  works. 

ON  BOYS'  READING 
Class   Room   Libraries   for   Public   Schools.     Published  by 


Bibliography  197 

the  Buffalo   Public  Library,   February,   1902.     The  latest  list. 

Graded  and  Annotated  Catalogue  of  Books  in  the  Carnegie 
Library  of  Pittsburg  for  the  Public  Schools,  1900.  The  full- 
est  list. 

Books  for  Boys  and  Girls,  compiled  by  Caroline  M. 
Hewins,  Hartford,  1897.     The  best  short  list. 

Boys'  Reading.  How  to  Help  Boys.  Vol.  IL  No.  3-  July, 
1902.     The  best  guide. 

ON    MORAL    AND    RELIGIOUS    TRAINING 

Abler,    Felix.      "Moral    Education."      New    York.      1896. 

Blakeslee,  E.  "  The  Natural  Line  of  Advance  in  Sun- 
day  School   Lessons."     Biblical   World.     January,    1902. 

Brown,  Marianna  C.  "Sunday  School  Movements  in 
America."     Chicago.     1901. 

Burton,  Ernest  D.  "The  Adaptation  of  Biblical  Liter- 
ature to  the  Development  of  the  Child."  Child  Study  Monthly. 
November,  1900. 

Butler,  Nicholas  M.  "Five  Evidences  of  An  Education." 
Revieiv  of  Education.     December,  1901. 

t^DAViES,  Henry.     'The  New  Psychology  and  Moral  Train- 
ing."    Int.     Journal  of  Ethics.     July,  1900. 

Davis,  Ozora  S.  "The  Endeavor  Movement  and  the  Boy." 
How  to  Help  Boys.    Vol.  II.     No.  i.    January,  1902. 

Dewey,  John.     "The  School  and  Society."    Chicago.     1900. 

Ellis,  A.  C.  "Sunday-School  Work  and  Bible  Study  in 
the  Light  of  Modern  Pedagogy."  Pedagogical  Seminary.  Vol. 
IV.  No.  3.  1896.  Contains  the  best  bibliography  of  relig- 
ious pedagogy  up  to  that  date. 

Fitch,  Sir  Joshua.  "Educational  Aims  and  Methods." 
London,  1900. 

FoRBUSH,  William  Byron.  "The  Boyhood  of  Jesus  and 
Its  Bearings  Upon  Religious  Pedagogy."    (Forthcoming,  1902.) 

Hall,  G.  Stanley.  "Some  Fundamental  Priciples  of  Sun- 
day-School and  Bible  Teaching."  Pedagogical  Seminary.  Vol. 
VIII.     No.  4.    December,  1901. 


198  The  Boy  Problem 


J 


"The  Moral  and  Religious  Training  of  Children 

and  Adolescents."    Ihid.     Vol.  I.     189 1. 

Henderson,  C  H.     "The  Philosophy  of  Manual  Training." 

opxilar  Science  Monthly.     Vol.  XLII.     1893. 

Lancaster,  E.  G.  "The  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Ado- 
lescence."   Pedagogical  Seminary.    Vol.  V.     1897. 

McKinney,  a.  H.  "Bible  School  Pedagogy."  New  York. 
1900. 

Mutch,  William  J.  Christian  Nurture;  a  magazine.  New 
HaveiL    1 90 1. 

Pease,  George  W.  "A  Suggestion  Toward  a  Rational  Bible 
School   Curriculum."     Biblical   World.     August,   1900. 

Sheldon,  Walter  L.  "An  Ethical  Sunday-School."  New 
York.     1900. 

Street,  J.  R.  "A  Study  in  Moral  Education."  Pedagogical 
Seminary.    Vol.  V.     1897. 

Walker,  Francis  A.  "Discussions  in  Education."  (Arti- 
cles on  Industrial  Training,  pp.  123-206,  written  1884-87). 
New  York.    1899. 

Winchester,  B.  S.  "A  Working  Hypothesis  for  Relig- 
ious Instruction."    Biblical  World.    September,  1901. 

"Religious  Methods  With  Boys:"  a  symposium.  How  to 
Help  Boys.    Vol.  I.    No.  5.    1901. 

"The  Use  of  a  Doctrinal  Catechism :"  a  symposium.  Bib- 
lical World.    September,  1900. 

"Principles  of  Religious  Education,"  by  several  writers. 
A  strong  series  of  practical  papers.    New  York.     1900. 

"The  Sunday-School  Outlook."    New  York.    1902. 

"The  Boy  and  the  Home,"  by  F.  G.  Peabody,  Samuel  W. 
Dike,  Jacob  A.  Riis,  Endicott  Peabody  and  others.  How  to 
Help  Boys.    Vol.  II.    No.  i.    January,  1902. 


A  READING  COURSE  ON  THE  BOY 
PROBLEM 

A  bibliography  of  such  a  subject  as  this  is  an 
exasperation  to  the  ordinary  reader,  because  some  of 
the  most  valuable  matter  referred  to  is  in  expensive 
books  and  technical  publications.  A  few  practical 
suggestions  are  often  called  for,  and  are  hereby 
given. 

The  first  book  to  read  on  child  study  as  related  to 
boy  life,  pending  the  appearance  of  Dr.  Hall's  long- 
awaited  book  on  "Adolescence,"  is  "The  Child,"  by 
Chamberlain,  ($1.50),  which  is  a  digest  of  the  whole 
subject,  a  book  which  cannot  be  read  hastily,  but 
which  is  a  mine  of  information.  Concerning  the  ap- 
plications of  the  facts  of  boy  life  to  religious  nurture, 
the  most  popular  books  are  those  of  Coe  and  Star- 
buck.  Coe's  ($1.00)  is  the  better  book;  it  contains 
about  all  of  Starbuck  and  much  more. 

As  soon  as  one  wishes  to  go  any  deeper  into  the 
matter  or  to  take  up  any  special  topic  thoroughly,  the 
files  of  the  Pedagogical  Seminary,  the  great  scholarly 
journal  of  adolescence,  must  be  studied.  The  only 
way  to  do  this  is  to  go  to  a  large  library,  as  the  maga- 
zine is  expensive  and  some  of  the  early  numbers  are 
out  of  print.  Those  who  desire  President  Hall's  ma- 
tured opinions  upon  the  matter  of  religious  instruc- 
tion will,  however,  send  for  the  number  for  Decem- 
ber, 1901. 


200  The  Boy  Problem 

One  purpose  of  our  own  study  has  been  not  only 
to  discuss  the  philosophy  and  work  with  boys,  but  also 
to  condense  this  scattered  material  in  handy  form. 
The  best  handbook  of  mass  clubs  is  Mr.  Lincoln 
Brown's,  'The  Ideal  Boys'  Club,"  (lo  cts.).  The 
tenth  report  of  the  Good  Will  Club  of  Hartford  (illus- 
trated) gives  the  most  vivid  idea  of  the  working  of 
such  a  club.  The  boys'  clubs  of  the  social  settlement 
type  are  best  studied  in  the  current  number  of  "The 
Commons"  (50  cts.  a  year).  McKinney's  is  the  best 
brief  manual  of  reHgious  pedagogy,  (40  cts.).  "How 
to  Help  Boys"  is  a  magazine  which  plans  to  take 
up  the  entire  field  of  work  with  boys  as  well  as  cur- 
rent special  movements.  The  back  numbers  sell  at  25 
cts.  to  $1  each.  The  subscription  price  is  $1.00  a 
year. 

All  these  may  be  secured  of  the  publishers  of  this 
volume. 

or  THE 

UNIVEr?SITY 

OF 


INDEX 

"Active"  membership,  91 

Adolescence,  18-41,  124 

Agassiz  Association,  142,  187 

Ambitions  of  Boys,  20 

Andover  Play  School,  74ff,  180 

Animal  Protective  League,  Our,  180 

Anthony,   A.   W.,   no 

Art  for  Boys,  35,  45 

Art  clubs.  45 

Atavism,  38 

Athletic  clubs,  44,  184 

Band  of  Hope,  180,  chart 
Band  of  Mercy,  180.  chart 
Bible,  The,  ii4ff,  173 
Bible  Illuminators,  Guild  of,  ii4ff,  185 
Bible  Normal  College,  119,  185 
Boy-Life,  9-41,  124 
Boys'  Brigade,  chart 
,  Boys'  Brotherhood,  72,  95,  184 
Boys'  Orderly,  179 
Boys'  U.  S.  A.,  180 
Brinton,   D.    G.,   136 

Brotherhood  of  St.  Andrew,  Junior,  94,  184,  chart 
Brotherhood  of  Andrew  and  Philip,  94,  184,  chart 
Brown,  Lincoln  K,  72,  195,  200 
Bunker  Hill  Boys'  club,   183 
Burr,  Henry  M.,  20,  21,  145,  146,  150 
By-Laws  of  Boy-Life,  29-41 

Camps,  68,  71,  140,  191,  chart 
Candy  Stores  as  Social  Centers.  42 
Captains  of  Ten,  96,  97,  139,  182 
Catechetics,  io8ff 


202  The  Boy  Problem 

Chamberlain,  A.  R,  9,  30,  35 

Chautauqua  Boys*  Club,  81 

Chew,  Thomas,  31,  59,  183 

Childhood,  9,  10 

Christian  Endeavor  Society,  Junior  and  Intermediate, 

82flF,  106,  128,  185,  chart 
Church,  The,  56,  69,  iii,  119,  120,  i59ff 
Church  Temperance  Legion,  The,  181 
City  History  Club,  179 
Clan-ethics  of  "gang",  34,  47 
Clark,  Francis  E.,  92 
Clark,  William  A.,  57,  142,  181,  195 
Clarke,  William  Newton,  no,  125 
Classes,  Communion,  iioff 
"Clumsy  age,"  30 
Coddling,  60,  165 

Coe,  George  A.,  22,  30,  86,  87,  109 
Collections,  139 
Collins,  John  C,  57 
Colozza,  48 
Commons,  The,  200 
Conversion,  21,  22,  119,  146,  147,  i6off 
Crane,  William  I.,  26 
Crisis,  21 

Davis,  Ozora  S.,  84,  197 
Davis,  W.  H.,  106,  114-117 
Dawson,  George  E.,  39 
Decision  Day,  120-123 
Delay  in  Development,  29,  30 
Drama,  142,  143 

"Emigration  period,"  20,  21,  127,  177 
Endeavor  Society,  82ff,  106,  128,  185,  chart 
Episcopal  Qiurch,  The,  112,  118,  168 
Epworth  League,  Junior,   185 


Index  203 


Ethical  clubs,  153 

Ethical  dualism,  33,  34 

Ethical  teaching  in  public  schools,  131-135 

Evans,  Margaret  J.,  131-133 

Fall  River  Boys'  Club,  31,  32,  183 
Farwell,  Parris  T.,  129,  167 
Fetishism,    13,   38 
Fitch,   Sir  Joshua,  84,   109 
French  boys,  32 

Games,  20,  21,  48,  I35ff 

"Gangs,"  34,  42-51,  106,  124 

Gardens,  76,  77,  192 

George  Junior  Republic,   179,  chart 

Gill  School  City,  179 

Girls'  Societies,  45ff 

Good  Will  Club,  183 

Good  Will  Home,   151 

Groos,  K,  135 

Groton  School,  50 

Group  clubs,  59-62 

Guild  of  Bible  Illuminators,  ii4ff 

Gulick,  Luther,  19,  70 

Gymnasiums,  137 

Habits,  II,  23,  128 

Hale  House  Republic,  178 

Hall,  G.  Stanley,  21,  22,  27,  109,  139,  156,  167 

Handiwork,  138 

Harper,  E.  T.,  106 

Hebrew  Boys,  32,  33 

Henderson,  C.  H.,  131 

Henderson,  C  R.,  109 

Hero  Scrap-Book,  182 

Home,  The,  42,  64,  I25ff 


204  The  Boy  FroUem 

Home  Department  of  the  Sunday-School,  182 
Home  Library  System,  65,  130,  182 
Hughlings-Jackson  theory,  21 
Hyde,  William  DeW.,  103,  162 

Ideals  of  Boys,  20,  21,  145 

Independent,  The,  14 

Industrial  clubs,  44 

Infancy,  9 

Instincts,  10,  23,  37,  47,  51 

International  Lesson  System,  I03ff 

Irish  boys,  32 

James,  William,  27,  191 

Jesus,  90,  115,  173 

Johnson,  George  E.,  26,  40,  52,  74ff 

Junior  Americans,  180 

Junior  League   for   Street-Cleaning,   179 

Junior  Republic,  179,  chart 

Katabolism,  85,  90 

King,  H.  C,  109 

King's  Sons,  184,  chart 

Knights  of  King  Arthur,  97-100,  142,  171,  182,  chart 

Knights  of  St.  Paul,  184 

Knights  of  the  Silver  Cross,  180 

Lancaster,  E.  G.,  21,  27,  154 

Lankester,  E.  Ray,  39 

Lee,  Joseph,   11,  34,  158 

Lesshaft,  E.,  31 

Lincoln  House,  62,  63,  65,  181 

Literary  clubs,  44 

Lombroso,  Paolo,  12 

Loyal  Temperance  Legion,   181 

Lulls,   36,   86 


Index 


205 


Mabie,  Hamilton  W.,   136 

McKinley,  Charles  E.,  169,  172 

Mackintire,  A.  B.,  96,  97 

Manual  training,   I3iff 

Mason,  Frank  S.,  64,  153 

Mass  clubs,  57-61 

Memory,  Verbal,  12 

Men  of  to-morrow,  6,  187 

Men's  leagues,  91,  95 

Mercy,  Band  of,   180 

Messenger  service,  165 

Miniature  Election  System,  180 

Missionary  instruction,   107,   108,   157,   173-175 

Moral  training,  130-134,  I74.  I75 

Morgan,  George  W.,  32 

Mosso,  A.,  27 

Music,  44,  141 

Mutch,  William  J.,  166,   187 

Nature  Study,  142 

Old  Testament,  13,  104,  144 
Order  of  the  Silver  Cross,  180 
Organizations,  Boys'  own,  42-51 


"Pairing,"  50 

Parenthood,  12,  23,  24,  I24ff 

Pastoral    calling,    170 

Pastor's  classes,  113 

Pastor's  work  with  Boys,  172!? 

Peabody,  Francis  G.,   106,   126,  158 

Pedagogical  Seminary,   The,   74,    199 

Personality,  36,  129,  153,  178 

Pets,    152 

Philanthropic  clubs,  44 

Pictures,  119,  146 

Pierce,  John  M.,  136 


206     .  The  Boy  Problem 

Play,  II,  48,  I25flf,  193,  194 

Playgrounds,  yyff,  1Q3,  194 

Play  School   (Johnson's),  74ff,  180,  chart 

Play-Work  Guild   (Clark's),  62,  187,  char. 

Pledges,  84,  88 

Preaching,  118,  171  ff 

Precocity,  29,  30 

Predatory  clubs,  44 

Pre-natal  child.  The,  9 

Pressey,  Edward  P.,  81 

Questions,  147 

Racial  differences,  31  ff 
Recognitions,  119,  153,  172 
Record  of  Virtue  Contests,  182 
Religion  of  a  boy,   13,  21,  i6off 
Religious  clubs,  82ff,  chart 
Religious   training,    I59ff 
"Reverberations,"  34 
Revivals,   119,   163 
Riis,  Jacob  A.,  126,  127 
Robinson,  E.  M.,  68,  140,  163 

St.  John,  Edward  P.,  22 
Savings,  65,  141,  181 
School,  The  Public,  i3off 
Scudder,  Doremus,  in 
Secret  societies,  44 
Sermon,  The,  118,  i7iff 
Service  of  others,   165 
Sex-Instruction,  I47ff 
Sexes,  Separation  of,  45ff,  87ff 
Sheldon,  H.  D..  13,  43ff,  83 
Siegert,  G.,  31 
Sloyd,  63 


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